Film Screenings: Impossibility of Filming Migration

As part of the International Festival of Ethnographic Films of Quebec, City of Montreal (FIFEQ-MTL), attend the film screenings of The Forest, by Lo Thivolle and Ouahib Mortada, and Elsewhere, Everywhere, by Isabelle Ingold and Vivianne Perelmuter.

The screenings will be followed by a discussion on conventional and alternative representations of migrants with the directors of the film Elsewhere Everywhere, Isabelle Ingold and Viviane Mauer, Emanuel Licha, artist and documentary filmmaker, and Amandine Hamon, a doctoral candidate in Communications at Université de Montréal.

The Forest

In Oujda, Morocco, there is a forest populated by migrants. In this forest, an ethnographer tries to meet them, but, in the forest’s darkness, he only encounters his own shadows. An intriguing and deeply reflexive filmic ethnographic essay, The Forest is a poetic short film concerned with the impossibility of filming the Other, and, as such, it is a film that questions the ethics of anthropology and of the filming of reality altogether.

The Forest, 2020, France, 16 min., Lo Thivolle and Ouahib Mortada. Original version in French with English subtitles.

Elsewhere, Everywhere

This troubling and extremely touching film narrates the solitude, dread and lost hopes of an asylum seeker, 20-year-old Shahin, who migrated from Iran to England. His story of asylum, juxtaposed with images extracted from security cameras located in different areas of the world, is transmitted through fragments of text messages and phone conversations with his family, as well as through the re-enactment, performed by Shahin himself, of his immigration officer’s questionnaire.

Filmmakers Isabelle Ingold and Vivianne Perelmuter studied at the French film school La Fémis and have directed and written diverse films since their graduation. They directed the film Elsewhere, Everywhere in collaboration with protagonist Shahin Parsa, who took the making of this film as an opportunity to reappropriate his migration experience.

Elsewhere, Everywhere, 2020, Belgium, 63 min., Isabelle Ingold and Vivianne Perelmuter. Original version in French with English subtitles.

Information

Free activity, in French, presented on Saturday, May 14, 2022, at 8:30 p.m.
Duration: 120 minutes
Location: J. Armand Bombardier Theatre at the McCord Museum
Limited seating, reservation required.
Billetterie Weezevent

FIFEQ-MTL

The International Festival of Ethnographic Films of Quebec, City of Montreal (FIFEQ-MTL) was founded in 2003 by visual anthropology students at Université de Montréal. A free and unique festival, it is one of the rare platforms to screen and promote ethnographic cinema in Canada.

Thanks to the generous involvement of hundreds of students from Concordia University, McGill University and Université de Montréal and of non-student professionals, the Festival has brought together thousands of viewers, all passionate about cinema and visual anthropology or simply curious about discovering hidden gems of the ethnographic repertoire.
See program