Arsenal on Location

Sections

Whose Voice is This?

Dana Iskakova, Saodat Ismailova | Duration 10'

WHOSE VOICE IS THIS? explores the soundscapes of the collection of Central Asian films in the Arsenal archive. By examining dubbed voices, background effects, and original soundtracks, the work traces Soviet ideology’s influence on films from the 1960s to the 1990s, capturing its gradual erosion and the impact of Perestroika.

Grandmamauntsistercat

Zuza Banasińska | Duration 23'

Created from materials garnered from the Polish Educational Archive, GRANDMAMAUNTSISTERCAT tells the story of a matriarchal family through the eyes of a child grappling with the reproduction of ideological and representational systems.

Afraid Doesn’t Exist

Anna Zett | Duration 31'

A defunct police state is experienced both as a source of nebulous horror, and as a site of political and poetic self-empowerment. Anna Zett combines film and sound material from the Berlin archives of the GDR opposition with poetry and music from the time, showing the charged period of transition in Germany between 1986 and 1990.

Endarchiv

Anna Zett | Duration 18'

Endarchiv examines the symbolic process of disposal and forgetting while raising the question how to take care of the emotional and performative remains of the GDR and its oppositional movements. The film maker Anna Zett is seen spray painting short questions and statements onto large mounds of pebble gravel, where every step leads to a rockslide. The action is interspersed with found footage filmed by Klaus Freymuth, showing artists and demonstrators painting and writing onto the East side of the Berlin Wall shortly after the border was opened in November 1989.

Sudesha

Yugantar | Duration 30'

SUDESHA (1983) takes its name from its central figure, a female activist involved in the Chipko movement, India's major ecofeminist protests at the foot of the Himalayas. The vibrancy of a first use of color is matched only by the fury felt by these women against deforestation, as well as against traditional roles. The happiest day of her life, a woman recalls, was when they arrested her and she no longer had to cook or wash dishes.

Idi Katha Maatramena

Yugantar | Duration 25'

IDI KATHA MAATRAMENA / IS THIS JUST A STORY? (1983), the only film by the Yugantar Collective that doesn't use so-called documentary images, is based on a screenplay co-written with another feminist and activist group, Sri Shakhti Sanghatana, and is dedicated to the issue of domestic violence and the often unseen effects of family life on women in India. Instead of opting for a moralistic tone or dwelling perhaps on the subject of death, the film focuses on the solidarity the main character finds in a friend.

Tambaku Chaakila Oob Aali

Yugantar | Duration 25'

The act of listening and allowing union and trade union groups to speak for themselves is also essential for TAMBAKU CHAAKILA OOB AALI / TOBACCO EMBERS (1982), in which the Yugantar Collective spends four months with the women workers of a tobacco factory in Nipani, the ground zero of one of India's most important labor strikes of the time, which involved 3,000 women. The result of this collaboration is almost like a strike manual, in which the workers discuss strategies of unionising and methods to spread their actions, as well as how they want to be represented.

Molkarin

Yugantar | Duration 25'

In MOLKARIN / MAID SERVANT (1981), Yugantar Collective's first film, reenactments of conflicts between employers and their domestic workers are mixed with interviews and images of community meetings where the workers discuss their needs and grievances. Gradually, these become resolutions, with hundreds of workers in the city of Pune coming together in a strike that succeeds in opening negotiations for new rights and a manifesto regulating working conditions, from respecting days off to providing decent pay.