Når månen stiger ut av mørke

In Brazilian Praia Formosa, we meet Muanza, who are trapped in the legacy of the trans-Atlantic slave era. She exists in the foundations of what was the Valongo Shipyard in the old port in the middle of Rio de Janeiro, trapped in the dilapidated ruins of an old mansion and bound to the people who in the 19th century were closest to her, the hated landlady included. Muanza feels resistance and succeeds in a ritual moment to break free from this everyday life of slavery. She wanders into a modern Rio and a community that mirrors her own cultural history, in a district and a country that has forever been marked by Muanza's Bakongoorigins.

Moroccan The Mother of All Lies is a tale of fear culture and control, about the tyrannical grandmother who has acted as gatekeeper for two generations of her family. Her son, the director Asmae's father, has built a replica of their little world up in the attic. Here, dolls of every of them are placed in detailed small rooms, including all the neighbors that the grandmother has spied on over the years, indeed the entire block of flats where they live in the center of Casablanca. The grandmother has repeatedly emphasized that silence is a virtue,- this because as she has experienced; walls have ears. Then the film widens its gaze and takes us to an event on 20 June 1981, when the army moved into the same street in connection with the demonstrations against increased bread prices. The army opened fire and after collected all the men, killing most of them and imprisoning the rest. In this way, the grandmother's regime of fear becomes a national regime of fear, and the dollhouse and the stories surrounding these violent events become a space for trauma therapy.

In a small place in Georgia, a young woman has to physically and ritually unroll a spinning thread from the hospital where her grandmother Medea died and the 24 kilometers to where her coffin rests, so that Medea's soul can rest in peace. Bebia, à mon seul désir is a story about a deeply traumatized family of women who are unable to love and trust each other. The ritual is central to the film, and while the broad picture slowly unfolds, the whole story points to the necessity of physical and phenomenological handling of grief and trauma for liberation to take place.

The last film in the series is the Chilean Animalia Paradoxa, situated in the ruins of the art center Centro Arte Alameda in Santiago, which was burned down during the great social protests of 2019 (Estallido Social). The film is a dark and beautiful post-apocalyptic vision reminiscent of pioneers such as Jan Švankmajer and even more so the Quay brothers in the way it combines live-action and the use of puppet sets with surreal, dreamlike and claustrophobic tableaus. An amphibious human being lives hidden in the ruins of the world. They searches for water and dreams of the sea, which appears as a distant memory. Animalia Paradoxa is a magical and indeed hopeful posthumanist fable whose transcendental images travel with us long after the film ends.

A small quote from one of the films covers all four films in the series:

"The performance of any ritual is not an immersion in the past - it is a necessary act to change your own future".

Many of us currently feel the injustice that others we care about now experience, and some indeed have experienced over many generations. Perhaps it is helpful for us to reflect on healing as an essence of peace and a component in the reconstruction of both the society’s and nature's ecosystem.

The series is curated by Hanan Benammar and Brynjar Bjerkem for the art producer Transcultural Arts Production (TrAP) and is shown at the cinematheques in Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim and Tromsø. In Oslo, the series is presented in collaboration with Agenda X, Mother of all lies is shown in collaboration with Oslo Dokumentarkino.

The series title is free after a stanza by Mahmoud Darwish.

Bergen

26.09 - 18:00 | Bebia, à mon seul désir; Georgia, 2021

02.10 - 18:00 | Praia Formosa; Brasil, 2024

03.10 - 18:00 | The Mother of All Lies; Marocco, 2023

10.10 - 18:00 | Animalia Paradoxa; Chile, 2024

Oslo

06.10 - 18:30 | Praia Formosa + The Mother of All Lies (i samarbeid med Oslo Dokumentarkino)

08.10 - 18:00 | Bebia, à mon seul désir + Animalia Paradoxa

Trondheim

10.10 - 18:00 | Bebia, à mon seul désir

16.10 - 18:00 | Animalia Paradoxa + The Mother of All Lies

19.10 - 17:00 | Praia Formosa

Tromsø

06.10 - 17:00 | The Mother of All Lies

08.10 - 18:00 | Bebia, à mon seul désir + Praia Formosa