11 + 18 april
Asian Movie Night x UvA Green Office:
Ripples, Echoes, and
what if the Earth Whispers
Asian Movie Night is a community cultural project in which selected Asian films are being screened to a public on a regular basis with curated themes and after-movie sessions to open up discussions.
This time AMN is collaborating with UvA Green Office for a programme, Ripples, Echoes, and what if the Earth Whispers, which further explores topics around Indigenous lands, territories, kinship and knowledge that are disproportionately affected by the climate change, capitalist economies, exploitation of resources and destructive policies. The programme is inspired by our previous edition Listening Nearby. Through Soils and Seas, and consists of some already screened, and some new films.
This program is curated by Akvilė Šlėgerytė and HSIEH I-Hsuan, and supported by UvA Green Office, University of Amsterdam Central Diversity Office, University of Amsterdam Humanities Faculty Student Council, Arnhem Gemeente, Cultuur Fonds.
Vrijdag 11 april, 20:30
SPECIAL
Asian Movie Night x UvA Green Office:
The Woman Carrying the Prey (揹獵物的女人)
Rngrang Hungul 余欣蘭｜2022｜Taiwan｜69’｜Truku, Mandarin, EN subs
This film focuses on Heydi Mijung, the sole female hunter in the Truku tribe. She upholds the ancestral tradition of 'Gaya' and practices the traditional hunting skills of the Truku to maintain the balance of the entire forest with her hunting methods. As winter approaches, Heydi returns to the old hunting grounds with her nephew to retrace the path and inspect the new hunting trails. The film portrays the perseverance and strength of women and delves into the intricate relationship between humans, animals, and ecology. This interdependence gradually develops through the daily practices of the female hunter. Indigenous hunter culture offers a fresh perspective on our connection with nature.
YU Hsin-lan, originally from the Truku tribe, bears the ethnic name Rngrang Hungul, where Rngrang is her first name, and Hungul is her father's. Rngrang's work is grounded in extensive visual fieldwork and focuses on contemporary issues indigenous people face. She excels in transforming everyday situations and intimate personal experiences of the tribe into creative elements from a woman's perspective, leading discussions on the positioning and methods of reconnecting individuals with traditional culture in contemporary society. Her recent works include "Mgaluk Dowmung, Connecting with Dowmung," "Woman the Hunter," "The Woman Carrying the Prey," and "Mountain Keepers.
Vrijdag 18 april, 19:30
SPECIAL
Asian Movie Night x UvA Green Office:
Ripples, Echoes, and what if the Earth Whispers (screening shorts + panel talk)
The Land in the Middle of the Pond (水池中的土地)
Anchi LIN (Ciwas Tahos) 林安琪｜2020｜Taiwan｜8’｜Atayal, EN subs
The Land in the Middle of the Pond references the forced displacement of the Atayal Qara community in the 1950s for the construction of the Shimen Reservoir, now Northern Taiwan's primary water source. An elder from the displaced Atayal Qara community narrates their story in the video, highlighting the impact of the diaspora on her people. It was filmed at the Shimen Reservoir during a drought. The artist is shown tracing the veins and blood vessels on her limbs, symbolizing her ancestral bloodline and identity. The film also portrays Ciwas and other Atayal women reenacting the Atayal ritual of name exchange, connecting Ciwas with her ancestral land and affirming her identity across time.
"I took so many risks of making this performance in this highly dangerous space (the reservoir), but still there are spaces that I would like to acknowledge beneath the water."
Anchi LIN, her Atayal tribal name: Ciwas Tahos. She is a visual artist of Taiwanese Atayal / Itaṟal and Hō-ló descent; she is based between Taipei and Naarm / Melbourne. Her body-centred practice weaves the Indigenous Atayal worldview through performance, moving images, cyberspace, ceramics, and kinetic installation to claim a self-determined queer space, her work is an exploration of cultural and gender identity, using her body as a medium to trace linguistic and cultural experiences of displacement to seek out new forms of understanding.
Everything Alive Becomes Quiet (tɯ:nar tɯ:n:aq ihijbit)
Sata Taas collective｜2023｜NL｜9’｜Sakha, EN subs
Throughout siberia’s history – at least since Russia’s original invasion and forceful assimilation of the territory in the 16th and 17th centuries – its natural resources have always been exploited by the central, metropolitan authorities, whether muscovite, imperial, soviet or post-soviet, as what is usually described as a “resource frontier”. From the tapping of the first sable to the sinking of the latest oil-well, the territory’s natural resources – animal, vegetable and mineral – have been hunted, mined, extracted, despoiled, transported west or exported on world markets to the advantage of the central metropole, and often to the degradation, detriment and destruction not only of the natural environment, but also of the Indigenous people of the territory. The video draws parallels between melting of the permafrost, loss of the worlds, and Indigenous understanding of the body as extension of the land. While dominant structures continuously participate in methodological elimination of knowledge and identities that are tied to the land, there is a need for space that acts as remembrance and reaffirmation of ancestral knowledge.
Sata Taas collective is a non-tangible network of narratives, memories, dreams, speculative fictions, affects, sensibilities and thoughts. The collective is a constellation of 4 Indigenous artists and cultural practitioners from the Sakha Sire and centers around the idea of revitalizing indigenous ontologies of relationality. Unfolding in the form of temporal-spatial encounters of communal learning, healing, and worlding, sata taas seeks to nurture kinship, solidarity, and exchange among communities beyond the politics of nation-state borders.
The Rivers They Don’t See (แม่น้ำที่เขาไม่เห็น)
Som Supaparinya｜2024｜Thailand｜29’｜Thai, EN subs
The Rivers They Don’t See takes viewers on a poignant journey along the Salween River, tracing the Thailand-Myanmar border, and continuing through the Ping River and Chao Phraya River into the Gulf of Thailand. This semi-documentary film unveils the intimate lives of farmers, fishers, villagers, and workers—people whose daily existence is intertwined with the waterways. Yet, these same rivers are rapidly changing, threatening their homes and livelihoods. Through sweeping landscapes and personal stories, the film explores the hidden impacts of political and economic forces that have shaped, and continue to reshape the land. The narrative goes beyond the visible: it uncovers the complex, often invisible forces of environmental degradation, economic pressures, and political manipulation that ripple through both nature and society. As the landscapes change, so too do the cultures, ecosystems, and futures of the people and creatures who call these places home.
Som Supaparinya lives and works in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Her works encompass a wide variety of mediums and focus on the impact of human activities on other humans and landscapes through political, historical, and literary lenses. It is a storytelling on noodle cultures, the change of the riverscapes, cityscapes, routes, electricity generation, wars, resistance sites and banned books.
Metamorphosis' Chantings Or That Time When I Incarnated as Porpoise (Cantos da Metamorfose Ou Aquela Vez Em Que Eu Encarnei Como Boto)
Ainá Xisto｜2024｜Portugal, Brazil, Spain｜11’｜Portugues, EN subs
Driven by will to give life and realizing the hinder it’s inevitable to face the spiral of time. An abyssal record guided by more-than-human relations through internal landscapes and authentic conversations to reestablish the flow of Metamorphosis: leaping from being to being like new ways of saying I. A chant to unfold destiny from immemorial times. Rupestre rituals intertwine different forces incorporated into the experience of the image to sculpt portals and attract the feeling of the latency of desire-colors, shapes and sounds hold the ether of creation to which life is determined. In Metamorphosis' Chantings Or That Time When I Incarnated as Porpoise, we sing to remember and embody what is already about to happen.
Ainá Xisto lives in Portugal and Brazil. As a filmmaker and visual artist, she draws psychomagical instruments and recalls to immemorial connections. Sharing pedagogies and imaginaries of transmutation, health and creativity, her works overflow from the intimate with the essence of the inexplicable, a trance-manifest of the future that already is, pregnant with different ways of living inside and outside time, in a configuration of multidisciplinary media connected through a cosmic rhizome, under symbiotic perspectives.
Panel talk
There will be a panel talk after the screening with Som Supaparinya, director of Rivers They Don’t See, Myra Colis, and moderated by Chihiro Geuzebroek.
Myra Colis is an Indigenous Igorot from the Global South and an advocate for AI ethics and governance, community leader, and founding chairperson of MABIKAs Foundation-The Netherlands. She is dedicated to integrating Indigenous perspectives into movements for decolonization, regeneration, sustainability, and social impact. Most recently, she introduced INAIYAN, a pioneering initiative focused on integrating Indigenous principles into AI systems. Through her practices, she is committed to bridging traditional knowledge with modern innovations as part of a broader effort to dismantle systemic injustices and shape sustainable futures.
Chihiro Geuzebroek is interested in (her)stories told by lesser known agents of change that inspire in system change struggles and that push the envelope for post-capitalist realities. Chihiro invests in collaborations and is most happy when she makes protest music with others. She prefers to treat the domain of climate justice tread upon with dry information with radical imagination and focuses on healing practices that are both physical, psychological, spiritual and collective. Her work aims to enable journeys of overcoming intergenerational trauma, healing economic-political wounds and a rediscovery of wholesome freedoms.