Multimodal Ethnography – Leiden University Graduation Screening

Entre Las Plantas by Mark Lindenberg

The film ‘Entre las Plantas’ (Among the Plants) portrays a Amazonian family who works and communicates with plants in order to help Peruvian and foreign people. In their garden they cultivate medicinal plants to heal and protect against negative energy. During the night, in ceremony, they communicate with the ‘mother of all plants’, Ayahuasca, who provides information on how to further help other people. With patience the filmmaker learns how plant, animal and human work together in this garden.

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Mark Lindenberg - Entre las Plantas

Mark Lindenberg is as a filmmaker and visual ethnographer, interested in making films that make the audience have a feeling of being there, stepping with him into a world unknown. He graduated as a cinematographer at the AHK – Filmacademy Amsterdam and combines his skills with his master study Visual Ethnography at Leiden University to make the ‘strange’ become understandable and familiar.

Surfing Frozen Oceans by Marcel El-Metwally

Surfing Frozen Oceans: An ethnographic shortfilm film by Marcel El-Metwally. By advertising nature based recreation, companies associated with the winter sport industry are inherently reliant on re-inscribing a dualistic nature/culture opposition. While nature is advertised as something ‘out there’, the practise of nature based recreation, offered by skiing resorts, is exercised in fully regulated human made spaces. By turning an infrastructural lens on the high alpine region, the practical ontologies of human and nonhuman co-creation are examined. While the practise of nature based recreation has positive effects on the environmental attitudes of practitioners, the ecological irony of winter sports tourism is stretched.

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Marcel El-Metwally - Surfing Frozen Oceans

Marcel El-Metwally is a Freelance Director and Filmmaker based in Utrecht. Marcel majored in Psychology (undergrad.) at Utrecht University and in Visual Ethnography (grad.) at Leiden University. In 2014 Marcel founded the company Native Art Films & Photography.

Our Village: ‘De Wallen’ by Eva Krol

The amount of tourists visiting Amsterdam is expanding with a million a year. Especially De Wallen, internationally known as the ‘Red Light District’, attracts many tourists with its image of ‘anything goes’. At the same time, this neighbourhood is the home of many residents struggling with the effects of neighbourhood change, influenced by the process of globalization and shaped by urban tourism. ‘Our Village: De Wallen’ shows how the desires for a stronger sense of belonging and a more liveable neighbourhood have led to greening initiatives by residents of De Wallen neighbourhood.

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Eva Krol - Ons Dorp

Eva Krol is a young documentary filmmaker and visual anthropologist based in Utrecht, The Netherlands. After a bachelor in Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology in Utrecht, she started the master Visual Ethnography at Leiden University. Her first short documentary ‘Bangun Berdiri: Sta Op’ was shown at Pakhuis de Zwijger, after which she did a few productions for musea. Next year she will further develop her documentary filmmaking skills with an internship at production company De Familie Film & TV.

Composing Freedom by Sarah Vasen

Music is more than just a sequence of sounds reaching our being. It can bring back memories, call up fantasies, dreams, feelings, and emotions. Music can destroy borders and connect us. Palestine has been under occupation since 1948, which impacts lives every day. Freedom is limited, because of restrictions within society and imposed identities by Israel. Inspired by her own experiences as a musician in the Netherlands, Sarah Vasen explores the meaning of music for young Palestinians. Does music open up for vulnerability within the hard realities of everyday life? How does music enrich the lives of the new generation in Palestine?

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Sarah Vasen - Composing Freedom

Sarah Vasen is a young documentary maker and Visual Anthropologist based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. After graduating from her BA Media and Culture and MSc Visual Ethnography she wants to continue making films which highlight human qualities and similarities across the world, building on empathy instead of the aspects that divide us. Her first short documentary gives a glimpse into the life of a nomad in Tagounite, Morocco, which was shown at 2Doc: Makers van Morgen. During her second short documentary she asks herself how it is to be a student, especially a female student, in the Islamic Republic of Iran.Currently, she is learning Arabic and getting inspired for upcoming documentaries.

Paths Unknown by Jorn van Bladel

Paths Unknown: A short ethnographic film by Jorn van Bladel. By engaging with the ‘off-roader habitus’, paths unknown tries to find the interaction and connection between people, their vehicles, and the places they drive through, in the Australian off-road scene. The film is centred in the relationships and experiences shared between off-roaders and Jorn. Experiences that span from driving the vast distances Australia is known for, to the friendships and banter that come with working on vehicles which are constantly exposed to some of the roughest terrain traversable by car.

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Jorn van Bladel - Paths Unknown

Jorn van Bladel is an ethnographer with a passion for filmmaking, digital and analogue photography, the great outdoors, and cars. Jorn is far from done with the off-roading scene, and aims to connect his involvement in it with his trainer as a photographer and cinematographer

Escape to Psytrance by Victoria van den Berg

‘Escape to Psytrance’ is an introduction to the outdoor psytrance festivals in Cape Town. The history of Apartheid, and the development of Cape Town into a world city has led to the need for escape. The outdoor psytrance festivals have created a safe space where one can feel safe and create a sense of community.

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Victoria van den Berg - Escape to Psytrance

Victoria van den Berg is a visual anthropologist based in Leiden, the Netherlands. After finishing the bachelor Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology in Leiden, she did the master Cultural Anthropology: Visual Ethnography at Leiden University. She specialised in music and digital communication, focusing on the influence of different music cultures on the global means of connection.

Born on a Journey by Sandra Patiño

‘Born on a Journey’ depicts intimate portraits of three pregnant undocumented immigrants who have settled in the surrounding areas of Bogotá, Colombia. After leaving their families in Venezuela; Aura, Sabrina, and Sarai face new challenges in their new home as they navigate local policies and social networks to gain access to healthcare services. Throughout the film, they recall their experiences as undocumented immigrants and long with nostalgia for their families back in Venezuela as they try to build a new future in Colombia.

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Sandra Patino - Naciendo en el Camino

Sandra Patiño is a visual ethnographer based in San Francisco, United States. After finishing her bachelor’s in Cultural Anthropology in San Francisco, she went on to complete her Masters’ in Visual Ethnography in Leiden, The Netherlands. Born in Bogotá, Patiño’s interest in documentary film has been influenced by her upbringing and academic development. She is currently working on a personal project, a short documentary series that tells the story of human social relationships with plant-based food.

Languages of Bonaire by Victor Navarro Izquierdo

Papiamentu is a creole language that was born during the slave trade era on the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao. The slaves used the languages of their different European colonizers such as Spanish, Dutch, English or Portuguese and created a new hybrid form of communication. Since then, Papiamentu has been the native language of the islanders. But Bonarians are also well known for being multilingual, they can easily switch between four languages. Today, their native language is thriving in new ways as new-coming immigrants are starting to learn it. In this documentary we will travel to the furthermost part of The Netherlands to discover the stories behind new speakers of Papiamentu on the island of Bonaire.

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Victor Navarro - Languages of Bonaire

Victor is an anthropologist and documentary filmmaker based in Barcelona, Spain. He spent his first academic years studying migrants moving to Iceland who were learning Icelandic, researching on their motivations to learn this language and their experiences using it with native Icelanders. During his Master specialization in Visual Ethnography at Leiden University he has brought his research topic to the audio-visual format and to a different location, by filming a documentary about new speakers of Papiamentu on the island of Bonaire (Caribbean Netherlands). At the moment he is about to start his PhD at Autonomous University of Barcelona, where he expects to create an academic methodology to research the topic of language learners combining written and audio-visual formats.

Oung Sa: Eaten by Fire by César Colmant

“Ougn Sa: Eaten by Fire” is an ethnographic film by César Colmant. Indigenous populations of the Vietnamese Highlands are facing the radical shrinking of their agricultural land in the current capitalistic era and the consequential dependence on other sources of income. The film follows members of a transnational family dispersed between France and Vietnam in their attempt to secure livelihood and strive in the context of a fast pace development in Vietnam. Adopting the point of view of a distant family member, the filmmaker questions the role that transmigrants play in supporting their kin at home and the unexpected relationships which connect them transnationally.

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César Colmant - Ougn Sa

César Colmant: is a humanitarian aid worker and a Filmmaker from Brussels. César majored in Political Sciences and Law (undergrad.) before working as a field coordinator with migrants in Serbia. He founded the fundraising NGO “La Route des Défis” in 2016 which supports ground-based initiative throughout Europe.

Moving Towards Visibility by Laura Molsbergen

The film provides a glimpse of the lives of three dancers, who are part of the wider ViaVia dance community in Arusha. They all have their own dreams to pursue, their own money to make to survive on a daily basis. As a unity, they share their passion for dance and the willingness to take their dance practices to a higher level. But the Tanzanian government and its people do not value dance for the development of the country. A-TOWN: Moving towards visibility shows how the dancers try to use their talent to escape the shadow and instead search for the spotlight to be seen by their fellow Tanzanians – but are they able to do so without the help from outsiders?

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Laura Molsbergen - A-Town

Laura Molsbergen is a young, creative human being based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. She finished the minor Visual Anthropology during the Bachelor Cultural Anthropology and Developmental Sociology at the University of Amsterdam; and she did an internship at VPRO Metropolis in Hilversum. She recently completed her Masters Visual Ethnography in Leiden. Combining her passions in spoken word, dance and documentary filmmaking, Laura always explores rhythms that synchronize and clash as a metaphor for human relationships; as well as her own position and blind spots when she meets another culture or person.