We Can Make
We are in a housing crisis. We urgently need new ideas. Step forward… We Can Make. We are taken to Knowle West, South Bristol, a 100-year-old council-built estate and one of the most deprived areas in Europe. The spirit in the neighbourhood is unbroken though and this community are taking a different route to affordable housing.
arable.
When a celebrated architect discovers an obsessive solace in designing a residential home on a plot of farmland, he must first address the matters in his own house.
The Settlers
Chile, early 20th century. José Menéndez, a wealthy landowner, hires three horsemen to mark out the perimeter of his extensive property and open a route to the Atlantic Ocean across vast Patagonia.
Tierra en llamas
Just when everyone thought the nightmare was over, a new menace strikes the city in a savage and bloody manner.
Bull Street
When an Ivy League lawyer challenges her family’s claim to their longtime home, small-town attorney LouEster Sadie Gibbs must fight a courtroom battle that pits privilege against legacy.
Closeness to the Land
In 2020, just as the pandemic was beginning, Gazala purchased land in western Ohio, on which sits a disused school building. This site allowed her to explore her complex relationship with “the land.” As the daughter of displaced indigenous Palestinians, she attempts to form a proxy bond with the earth, on ground that was stolen from the displaced indigenous Shawnee people. Closeness to the Land is video footage of hand-painted text signs that translate the word الأرض (ard) into six English words, displayed performatively in multiple locations to capture the now-invisible nature of indigenous culture in Ohio. These signs were installed on the old schoolhouse in early 2021.
BODY/LAND
An experimental documentary featuring care-led practices of audiovisual archive remix, interviews and collaborative performances. The film features the home movies of Paul Berry, who was an Oscar-nominated animator, whose personal Super 8 collection is a sadly rare example of queer domestic life in film archive collections. Supported by research at the North West Film Archive, these moments of queer joy, chosen family, rural trips, and celebrations are reimagined alongside other regional film collections to a newly composed original score. Five portraits of specially featured artists discuss narratives that reflect how queer and trans creatives understand themselves, their histories, and their representation in relation to environment and landscape. These interventions weave through each artist’s practice in photography, spoken word, performance, sculpture and music, moving towards an expansive language of BODY(s) and LAND(s).
Da Terra
Emília Pedro e Fernanda Jorge revisit childhood memories to identify over 70 land parcels inherited from their father. As physical traces fade, memory and oral tradition become the only way to 'see' what is no longer visible.
Hourglass
Sand is the second-most exploited resource in the world. In Southeast Asia, escalating demand fuels an opaque and often illegal trade. Hourglass, an immersive documentary short, juxtaposes Singapore's ever-rising skylines to the sinking shores of Vietnam's Mekong Delta, creating an unsettling portrait of an urgent crisis carrying profound human costs.
Forests
In a dark, ambiguous environment, minuscule particles drift slowly before the lens. The image focuses to reveal spruce trees and tall pines, while Innu voices tell us the story of this territory, this flooded forest. Muffled percussive sounds gradually become louder, suggesting the presence of a hydroelectric dam. The submerged trees gradually transform into firebrands as whispers bring back the stories of this forest.
Wounds of Our Land
Tragic pages in the history of the formation of the independent Lithuanian state in 1918-20.
AÏT ATTA: Nomads of the High Atlas
The Aït Atta tribe of the High Atlas mountain range in Morocco preserves their ancestral right of access to the agdal, a communal land management system that dates back hundreds of years. The film follows Ben Youssef family’s arduous transhumance journey from the desert-like landscape of Nkob to the green pastures of Agdal Igourdane, throughout uneven terrain of steep climbs and descents of these High Atlas mountains. They migrate each summer with their 800 goats, donkeys, mules, camels and dogs, as they embark on this formidable journey on foot.
Last Man's Land
Last Man’s Land follows Isiah, a hardened survivor navigating a post-apocalyptic America two years after the world’s collapse. When a ruthless survivalist steals a cache of desperately needed medical supplies meant for a group of sick children, Isiah sets out across a dangerous, lawless landscape to track them down and bring the supplies back—no matter the cost.
In the Shadow of the Serengeti
A Maasai human rights lawyer fights to stop the evictions of his people from their homelands in Tanzania. On the outskirts of Serengeti National Park in East Africa, Maasai face eviction from their land to make way for international tourism and hunting grounds. Human rights lawyer Joseph Oleshangay campaigns for his community to remain on its homeland as it has done for generations. While he represents Maasai communities in court, Joseph also remains close to his traditions among the cattle at his rural home near the Ngorongoro Crater. Risking his life to gather evidence from recently depopulated villages, Joseph battles in court where he leads the fight to resist the evictions.
Landscape of our Body
As queer trans and gender non-conforming children of the Vietnamese diaspora, we are fragmented at the crossroads of being displaced from not only a sense of belonging to our ancestral land, but also our own bodies which are conditioned by society to stray away from our most authentic existence. Yet these bodies of ours are the vessels we sail to embark on a lifetime voyage of return to our original selves. It is our bodies that navigate the treacherous tides of normative systems that impose themselves on our very being. And it is our bodies that act as community lighthouses for collective liberation. Ultimately, the landscape of our bodies is our blueprint to remembering, to healing, to blooming.
Between Mars and Earth
In the Christmas holidays, a mysterious extra-terrestrial force bursts into the life of a suburban couple on the brink of divorce. However, none of them notices this otherwordly presence, so this entity will have to live with them in this grey, sad and lifeless home, observing as their relationship finally desintegrates.
Something from There
Something from there is a short film on the substance of our original lands. Weaving between the voices of the artist’s parents, one a refugee and the other not, the film is personal, yet evokes a shared Palestinian experience.
Eden Alone Surpasses Thee
Jarred by the loss of his closest friend, a farmer on Tasmania’s remote West Coast, begins to mentor at-risk local youth. In an area renowned for its poverty, low literacy, and high suicide rates, Stafford Heres is determined to provide opportunities for kids who have few. Eden Alone Surpasses Thee explores his relationship with the land, loss, and the young men he takes under his wing.
Land Shark
A Land Shark hunts for human prey.
Dear Home of Scars
A new installation by Ibrahim Mahama exposes the colonial ‘scars in the landscape’ in Northern Ghana and inspires the local community.