Labour of Love – The Housewife (1974)
Rajendra Gour
17 min,
HD video
11 December 2021
13.00 – 13.30
National Awakening Museum (STOVIA)
Labour of Love – The Housewife (1974) was a bronze medal winner at the 50th American International Film Festival. This short film examines the role of the Asian woman within the realm of the home and the family, in particular the role of the housewife. The film is an early feminist take at the misconception of the non-economic value of the stay-at-home mother and wife, whose contribution to society is often underrated.
Supported by: Asian Film Archive.
Wild Relatives (2018)
Jumana Manna
64 min,
64 min,
HD video
11 December 2021
13.30 – 14.34
National Awakening Museum (STOVIA)
13.30 – 14.34
National Awakening Museum (STOVIA)
Deep in the earth beneath the Arctic permafrost, seeds from all over the world are stored in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault to provide a backup should disaster strike. Wild Relatives starts from an event that has sparked media interest worldwide: in 2012 an international agricultural research center was forced to relocate from Aleppo to Lebanon due to the Syrian Revolution turned war, and began a laborious process of planting their seed collection from the Svalbard back-ups. Following the path of this transaction of seeds between the Arctic and Lebanon, a series of encounters unfold a matrix of human and non-human lives between these two distant spots of the earth. It captures the articulation between this large-scale international initiative and its local implementation in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon, carried out primarily by young migrant women. The meditative pace patiently teases out tensions between state and individual, industrial and organic approaches to seed saving, climate change and biodiversity, witnessed through the journey of these seeds.
