Our second film program focused on Touching Realities
May 12 - 19, 2021
Hearing, seeing, touching, tasting, and smelling, we are but one version of reality. As we know, our reality can be slightly, somewhat, or even radically different from the reality being experienced at the very same time and place by other people. WF online series gives the opportunity to access four different curatorial themes throughout 2021. Our first program focused on works from Indigenous Peoples. Touching Realities encompasses six documentaries highlighting displacement and personal hardship, giving us some views into their realities,
pause for reflection and bringing us closer.
Under the Lemon Tree
by Noor Al-Asswad
Qatar/Palestine, 2020, 10 mins, Arabic with English subtitles
We spend a day under the shade of a lemon tree with a Palestinian woman named Khaldieh who was abruptly exiled from her hometown of Tulkarem in 1967. She recreates her homeland through an assemblage of simple elements.
The Fantastic
by Maija Blåfield
Finland, 2020, 30 mins, Korean with English subtitles
The Fantastic is a film about encountering the unknown and the relationship between imagination and reality. The film is built on interviews with exiled North Koreans, who describe what they imagined the outside world to be like, based on their experiences of watching smuggled western fiction films.
Hunstville Station
by Chris Filippone and Jamie Meltzer
USA 2020, 13 mins 58, English with English subtitles
Every weekday, inmates are released from Huntsville State Penitentiary, taking in their first moments of freedom with phone calls, cigarettes, and quiet reflection at the Greyhound station up the block.
Carbón
by Davide Tisato
France/Switzerland 2020, 25 mins, Spanish with English subtitles
Nivardo and Ismael, both over seventy years old, survive in the current economic context of Cuba by producing charcoal. Night after night, the two best friends watch over a process of transformation, hidden behind an acrid smoke. Wood is slowly turned into charcoal and at the same time their reality is unwittingly but irrevocably moving away from the revolutionary ideals for which they have been fighting for more than 60 years.
CHSLD
by François Delisle
Canada/Quebec, 2020, 20 mins, French with English subtitles
François Delisle draws an intimate portrait of his mother in a nursing home. A chronicle of the daily life and medical care of a woman approaching the end, treated with love, respect and dignity.
3 Logical Exits
by Mahdi Fleifel
Denmark, United Kingdom, Lebanon, 2020, 15 mins, Arabic with English subtitles
A sociological meditation on the different “exits” that young Palestinians choose, in order to cope with life in the refugee camps.
WF Online series included four curated screening programs each giving a curatorial focus featuring Basel, Swiss and/or international productions. Each program was available for one week, accompanied when possible with interviews with the filmmakers.
February 2021 (17 - 24): Indigenous Peoples
May 2021 (12 - 19): Touching Realities
October 2021 (24 - 31): Sustainability
December 2021 (14 - 21): Video essays
This project was made possible thanks to the financial support of the Mary & Ewald E. Bertschmann-Stiftung and the Division of Cultural Affairs Basel-Stadt.