 | A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject.(January 2024) |
| Hegel's Angel | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Zanj Hegel la | |
| Directed by | Simone Rapisarda Casanova |
| Starring | Pierre Widley Phadaël, Mentor Rood, Eddy Fleursaint, Gala Calisto, Philippe Petit, Ebby Angel Louis. |
Release date |
|
Running time | 70 minutes |
| Country | Canada / Haiti / Italy / United States |
Hegel's Angel (Haitian Creole : Zanj Hegel la) is a 2018 experimental film directed by Simone Rapisarda Casanova.
Inspired by Vodou and Kanaval cosmologies, and co-written with the entire cast and crew, Hegel's Angel is an experimental ethnofiction that challenges the boundaries between film genres. The film, set in Haiti, follows an inquisitive boy named Widley whose life unfolds away from the turmoil of an upcoming presidential election. The boy plays football, goes swimming, works with his father on odd jobs, and visits a local editor who is putting together a film within the film while lamenting the director’s disappearance. Throughout, Widley witnesses the struggle of his people under what has been dubbed “the charitable-industrial complex”, and the transition from one foreign domination to another. [1] [2]
Hegel's Angel is the third feature film by Simone Rapisarda Casanova. It is the result of the experience the artist had in 2013 and 2014 while living and working as a film teacher in Jacmel, Haiti. As in his previous works, the artist’s stylistic hallmarks include his elliptical, metacinematic approach to storytelling, his unconventional collaboration with non-actors, his use of natural light and colour inspired by renaissance paintings, [3] along with meticulously-composed single-takes and diegetic soundscapes. [4] His approach to filmmaking is mostly process-driven, after careful research of the thematic base. [5] Unlike Rapisarda's previous works, where he adopted a "one-man-crew" approach, [2] Hegel's Angel is the result of his tight collaboration with a small crew composed by former students and their relatives and friends. Rapisarda’s commitment to collaboration, or “shared ethnography”, as inspired by filmmaker and anthropologist Jean Rouch, [2] infuses his work and results in all participants being credited as co-writers of the film. [2] The intent behind the artist's stylistic and methodological choices is to create a cinematic occasion where people and places may reveal their deepest nature. [6]
In this as in previous films, the author questions the ethics of ethnographic filmmaking, and especially of Western ethnographic filmmaking documenting life in developing nations. [7] He strives to make the spectator aware of cinematic artificiality by means of a reflexive style that repeatedly and in various ways exposes the directorial performance. [7] This choice also provides him with a tool to explore the boundaries of the cinematic medium. Since this approach doesn't clear the ethical issues, Rapisarda adopts a wide range of actions, inside and outside the filmmaking process, to balance what he considers the implicit exploitative character of the medium. [7] The film attempts to give of Haiti, a country traditionally under-documented in cinema, [8] an image that finally embodies a plurality of cosmological views. [7] The title blends together ideas drawn from the work of Walter Benjamin "Theses on the Philosophy of History" and Susan Buck-Morss argument on Hegel's theorization of the master-slave dialectic following the Haitian revolution of 1791. [9]
Agnès Varda was a Belgian-born film director, screenwriter, photographer, and artist with French and Greek origins.
Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that rigorously re-evaluates cinematic conventions and explores non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, particularly early ones, relate to arts in other disciplines: painting, dance, literature and poetry, or arise from research and development of new technical resources.
Lourdes Portillo is a Mexican film director, producer, and writer.
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The Crossroads Film Festival is an independent film festival that takes place annually around the Jackson metropolitan area in the state of Mississippi. The second oldest film festival in Mississippi, Crossroads Film Festival focuses on independent film of all kinds, as well as regional and Mississippi films. Its parent organization, the Crossroads Film Society, celebrated the 20th Festival in April, 2019.
Ethnofiction refers to a subfield of ethnography which produces works that introduce art, in the form of storytelling, "thick descriptions and conversational narratives", and even first-person autobiographical accounts, into peer-reviewed academic works.
Jacques Thelemaque is an American screenwriter and director best known as the president of the Los Angeles film collective Filmmakers Alliance.
Isabelle Carbonell is a Belgian-Uruguayan-American award-winning experimental documentary filmmaker, and an assistant film professor at the American University of Paris. She holds a PhD in film from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research and practice lie at the intersection of expanded documentary, environmental justice, and the Anthropocene, while striving to develop new visual and sonic approaches and methods to rethink documentary filmmaking and create a "multispecies cinema". Imbued in all her work is the connection between the slow violence of environmental disaster, climate change, bodies of water, more-than-humans, and the future. Carbonell's award-winning films and installation works have been presented in museums, film festivals, and art galleries internationally.
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Ben Russell is an American artist and experimental filmmaker. Russell developed his reputation over the numerous shorts he made throughout the 2000s, many as part of his "Trypps" series, and as the curator of the Magic Lantern Cinema in Providence, Rhode Island. In 2009, he made his acclaimed feature debut, Let Each One Go Where He May, shot in Suriname in a series of 13 long takes accomplished with a Steadicam. Both a Guggenheim Fellow and participating artist in documenta 14, Russell's work has been described as drawing on elements of ethnography, psychedelia and Surrealism.
Rouzbeh Rashidi is an Iranian-Irish avant-garde filmmaker and founder of Experimental Film Society. Since 2000, Rashidi produced experimental feature films and numerous volumes of instalments for the Homo Sapiens Project. His films have been associated with the Remodernist Film Movement.
Ethnocinema, from Jean Rouch’s cine-ethnography and ethno-fictions, is an emerging practice of intercultural filmmaking being defined and extended by Melbourne, Australia-based writer and arts educator, Anne Harris, and others. Originally derived from the discipline of anthropology, ethnocinema is one form of ethnographic filmmaking that prioritises mutuality, collaboration and social change. The practice's ethos claims that the role of anthropologists, and other cultural, media and educational researchers, must adapt to changing communities, transnational identities and new notions of representation for the 21st century.
The Tel Aviv International Student Film Festival is the largest of its kind in the world and is considered one of the most important in its field. The film festival hosts hundreds of students, lecturers and guests of honor from the world's leading film industry in Tel Aviv, for a week of screenings and cultural events. Hundreds of films, premieres, cinematic events, workshops, conferences and special projects are held, inviting thousands of visitors to the Tel Aviv Cinematheque halls every day. Since 2013, it has been held once a year, in June, in Tel Aviv.
Elle-Máijá Apiniskim Tailfeathers is a Blackfoot and Sámi filmmaker, actor, and producer from the Kainai First Nation in Canada. She has won several accolades for her film work, including multiple Canadian Screen Awards.
Simone Rapisarda Casanova is an Italian experimental filmmaker currently living in Canada. In 2014 he won the Leopard for Best Emerging Director at the Locarno International Film Festival.
The Creation of Meaning is a 2014 experimental film directed by Simone Rapisarda Casanova.
The Strawberry Tree is a 2011 experimental film directed by Simone Rapisarda Casanova. The film premiered at the 2011 Locarno Film Festival.
Hale County This Morning, This Evening is a 2018 American documentary film about the lives of black people in Hale County, Alabama. It is directed by RaMell Ross and produced by RaMell Ross, Joslyn Barnes, Su Kim, and is Ross's first nonfiction feature. The documentary is the winner of 2018 Sundance Film Festival award for U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Creative Vision, 2018 Gotham Independent Film Award for Best Documentary Feature and the Cinema Eye Honors Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. After its theatrical run, it aired on the PBS series Independent Lens and eventually won a 2020 Peabody Award.
Cinema in Qatar is a relatively young industry that evolved as part of the country’s plans to develop different local sectors with the aim of accumulating international recognition and status. Many major steps were taken to implement a long-term plan to develop the infrastructure as well as giving opportunities to local talents to have a platform that establishes their presence within the film industry with the support of the Doha Film Institute, and their various grants, workshops and festivals. The Qatar National Vision 2030 has three major pillars to development: human, social economic and environmental; this vision provides frameworks that enable the development of different elements within Qatar and its society; one of which is the high importance put on developing and cultivating artistic talents to represent and define Qatar on a global scale. Another important element in developing the movie industry is the influence and vision of Sheikha Al Mayassa who founded Doha Film Institution; the establishment of film as a mode of storytelling was imperative because it serves the purpose of granting Qatar a global presence through the talents that are supported and cultivated because of her initiative. The film industry plays a role in amplifying the Qatari national identity alongside the identity of the Arab world as a whole.
