Curated by Alexey Artamonov, Denis Ruzaev e Ines Branco Lopez.
Our relationship with death has undergone a significant transformation in the modern world, shifting away from its reciprocal character. The realms of the dead and the living no longer overlap. On the contrary, we avoid death. Ancestors no longer exist. They have become a remote memory, a ghost of the past, an ideological construct.
But doesn't this detachment bring more harm than good? With the evolution of capitalism and industrialization, the dead have gradually ceased to exist. They were expelled from the realm of symbolic human networks. The spiritual disconnect between life and death, the impediment of any reciprocal relationship, of gift and symbolic exchange between the dead and the living, is paid for by a continuous death in our lives. Without a symbolic relationship with those who lived before us, the psychological internalisation of our own mortality results in an anguish of finitude. This anguish can no longer be easily relieved.
Our desire to conquer death is motivated by a desire for survival, a quest for eternity, and the preservation of life as an absolute value. However, as Bataille reminds us, life only exists in its eruption in death and in the act of exchange: to pretend that nothing but life exists is to create nothing but death. By renouncing death, we renounce life, replacing it with perpetual accumulation – accumulation of time.
Ancestors are the meeting point between death and life, nature and culture. It is them who allow for the continuity and circulation of life. Always entwined with memory, this relationship is inherently collective. Unlike ghosts, ancestors exist thanks to collectivity: neither death nor memory is a purely individual matter. They are part of a network, a nucleus made up of many, living and dead. While encounters with ghosts tend to be personal and one-to-one, ancestors exist for everyone. They allow the present to inherit from the past, transmuting it, embodying it and surpassing it.
Throughout history, our relationship with the ancestors took place through spirituality and magic. But it was also expressed through the arts, words, culture…
Much like other art forms, cinema serves as a medium to build a bridge between our ancestors and us, allowing us to listen to those who are no longer with us. It offers a pathway to learn a history that is ours, yet often feels so distant; to discover an identity or spirituality.
If we can't be witches, we can still be cinephiles...
O U V E R T U R E S, The living and the Dead Ensemble
Saturday, November 11, 19h30, Cine-Teatro Turim
With the presence of Sophonie Maignan and Léonard Jean-Baptiste, members of the Living and the Dead Ensemble
Night Time Go + Day in Life + Whutarr, Saltwater Dreams, Karrabing Collective
Sunday 12, 22h, Cine-Teatro Turim
The Outskirts, Pyotr Lutsik
Quinta-Feira 15, 17h, Cine-Teatro Turim
West Indies, Med Hondo
Friday 17, 14h, Medeia Nimas Cinema
Surname Viet Given Name Nam, Trinh T. Minh-há
Friday 17, 19h30, Cine-Teatro Turim
A Japanese Village, Shinsuke Ogawa
Saturday 18, 14h, Cine-Teatro Turim
Pedra Sozinha Não Sustém Panela + O Kimbanda Kambia, Ruy Duarte Carvalho
Sunday 19, 16h30, Medeia Nimas Cinema
The Haunted, Saodat Ismailova + The Mummy - The Night of Counting the Years, Chadi Abdel Salam
Sunday 19, 21h30, Cine-Teatro Turim