An Inconsolable Memory: Selected Films of Aryan Kaganof
Columbia University
Italian Academy for Advanced Studies
Heyman Center for the Humanities
Institute for African Studies
Department of Art History and Archeology School of the Arts M.A. in Film Studies Program
present
An Inconsolable Memory:
Selected Films of Aryan Kaganof
Tuesday and Wednesday, March 11 and 12, 2014
The Italian Academy
1161 Amsterdam Avenue
(south of 118th Street)
New York, NY 10027
Free and open to the public
Additional info and registration at www.italianacademy.columbia.edu
* Italian opera in South Africa; Harlem’s “Last Poets”;
labor strikes; and musical satire *
On March 11 and 12, 2014, South African independent filmmaker Aryan Kaganof will present and discuss his selected films, most of which have never been seen in the United States. On Wednesday, March 12 at 4:30 pm he will join Richard Peña (Columbia), Hlonipha Mokoena (Columbia), Sean Jacobs (The New School) and Anna Grimshaw (Emory University) in a panel discussion about his work.
The screenings will include
= the U.S. premiere of An Inconsolable Memory, Kaganof’s 2013 documentary on The Eoan Group Book Project, an initiative to collect the forgotten history of a set of “coloured” performers from Cape Town’s District Six who performed Italian opera to mixed audiences during and after apartheid;
= the world premiere of Night is Coming: A Threnody for the Victims of Marikana, an examination of past and current South African culture through the lens of the 2012 strikes in the Rustenburg area of Marikana, South Africa (unrest that resulted in the deaths of 48 people, most of whom were striking miners, in the single most lethal use of force by South African security forces against civilians since the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960);
= the U.S. premiere of Guerilla Blues and Holy Ghosts, a compelling portrait of Gylan Kain, one of the founders of “The Last Poets,” the Harlem spoken-word group established in 1968 which is said to be a precursor to hip-hop;
= the U.S. premiere of The Uprising of Hangberg, Kaganof and Dylan Valley’s dynamic documentary of the struggles of the marginalized communities of the Hout Bay suburb of Cape Town, which occurred when police tried to forcibly remove them from their homes; and
= Nice to Meet You, Please Don’t Rape Me, Kaganof’s 1994 musical satire of the newly post- apartheid South Africa.
Featured screenings begin at 5:30 pm on Tuesday, March 11. On Wednesday, March 12, a panel discussion on Kaganof’s work will take place at 4:30 pm. Additional screenings of films by Aryan Kaganof will run from 12:00 pm on March 11. Films are intended for an adult audience. Admission is free. Registration and further information at www.italianacademy.columbia.edu
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Schedule
Tues., March 11
5:30 pm: Introduction: David Freedberg (Director, Italian Academy)
5:45 pm: Nice to Meet You, Please Don’t Rape Me (1994); 35 min; NY premiere
6:20 pm: Aryan Kaganof in conversation with Hlonipha Mokoena (Columbia University)
6:45 pm: An Inconsolable Memory (2013); 110 min; US premiere
Wed., March 12
3:30 pm Night is Coming: A Threnody for the Victims of Marikana (2014); 52 min.; world premiere
4:30 pm: Panel Discussion: Anna Grimshaw (Emory College); Sean Jacobs (The New School), Aryan Kaganof, Hlonipha Mokoena (Columbia), Richard Peña (Columbia)
5:30 pm: Guerilla Blues and Holy Ghosts (2012); 60 min; NY premiere
6:40 pm: Aryan Kaganof in conversation with Richard Peña (Columbia University)
7:00 pm: The Uprising of Hangberg (2011); 90 min.; US premiere
Directed by Aryan Kaganof and Dylan Valley
_____________________________________________________________________________________ Bios
South African independent filmmaker Aryan Kaganof is a visual artist, novelist and poet who explores provocative and politically charged subject matter. Born in 1964 as Ian Kerkhof, he left South Africa for the Netherlands at nineteen to avoid conscription into the South African army during Apartheid. Before enrolling in the Netherlands Film and Television Academy in 1990, he worked for the Dutch Anti- Apartheid Movement, while also writing for international publications and programming jazz for pirate radio stations. He won a Golden Calf (Best Feature) for Kyodi Makes the Big Time, a self-produced 16mm production shot in 14 days while still a second-year student. In 1996 he pioneered the use of digital video as a feature film medium with the transfer to 35mm of Naar De Klote! (Wasted!) and went on to direct the first Japanese film utilizing this process (Tokyo Elegy, 1999).
In March 2000, following Kaganof’s return to South Africa, a retrospective of his films was held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. His 2002 film Western 4.33 which tells the story of the German concentration camps on Shark Island off the coast of Luderitz, Namibia, was screened at the 2004 Berlinale and won awards for Best Video Made in Africa at the 12th Milan African Film Festival, and Best Documentary Made in Africa at the Reunion Africa and Islands Film Festival. In 2005 he shot the world’s first feature film made with a mobile phone camera (SMS Sugarman) and was a Visiting Professor at K3 Malmo University, Sweden, following the film’s success there.
He has had solo exhibitions in Cape Town’s Association for Visual Arts (AVA) and in Durban at the NSA Gallery, where he was also artist in residence.
Kaganof has worked as an editor with many South African film directors including Akin Omotoso (Jesus and the Giant, which Kaganof also scripted) Ntshavheni wa Luruli (Elelwani) (Imagine) and Craig Matthew (Welcome Nelson, a documentary about the 20th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, screened by eTV in 2010).
His ongoing music research project the African Noise Foundation, performed as part of the Badilisha Poetry Festival at Spier in December 2009, features Zim Ngqawana, Mantombi Matotiyana and the Kalahari Surfers. In November 2010 he collaborated with Cape Town filmmaker Dylan Valley on The Uprising of Hangberg, a documentary exposing human rights violations in Hout Bay (a Cape Town suburb) by the Metro police force. Recently a retrospective film festival of his work, AK47, organized by DOMUS, was held in Stellenbosch. In November, 2013, he screened An Inconsolable Memory, a long form documentary about the Eoan Group Book Project, at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam.
Anna Grimshaw is Professor at Emory University. She teaches courses on ethnographic cinema, visual culture, experimental ethnography, and ethnographic filmmaking.
She was a founder and editor of the innovative Prickly Pear Pamphlet Series Her books include The Ethnographer’s Eye: Ways of Seeing in Modern Anthropology (2001) and Observational Cinema: Anthropology, Film and the Exploration of Social Life (2009), coauthored with Amanda Ravetz. She was an editor for the book Visualizing Anthropology: Experiments in Image-based Practice (2005).
Mr. Coperthwaite: A Life in the Maine Woods. She has recently completed a series of films:
Sean Jacobs is on the faculty of the New School for Public Engagement. He is currently writing a book on the intersection of mass media, globalization and liberal democracy in post-apartheid South Africa. Sean founded the website Africa is a Country. He is a native of Cape Town.
Hlonipha Mokoena is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University. She teaches and studies South African intellectual history. Her
Abantu Abamnyama Lapa Bavela Ngakona (The Black People and Whence They Came).
Richard Peña is Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University. He Antonioni, Guitry, Kiarostami, Aldrich, Figueroa, Ghatak, Muratova, Chahine, Ozu, Saura and Bachchan, as well as film series devoted to African, Chinese, Cuban, Polish, Hungarian, Arab, Korean, Japanese Soviet and Argentine cinema. He is also currently the co-host of Channel 13’s weekly Reel 13.
The Heyman Center for the Humanities provides the intellectual and physical space for interdisciplinary discussions among members of the Columbia community and the New York City public. It brings together faculty and students from across the university—from the humanities, social and natural sciences, law, medicine, journalism, and the arts—to share thinking, debate ideas, and collectively consider methodological, conceptual, and ethical issues of common interest and concern. It sponsors public programming—lectures, poetry and fiction reading, workshops, conferences, symposia, seminars, and performances—fosters scholarly and artistic collaborations, and offers meeting spaces for its various affiliated members.
Founded in 1959, the Institute of African Studies prepares generations of Africa practitioners for careers in academic research, teaching, development, diplomacy, business, governance, journalism, law, and human rights. Through its many lecture-series, conferences, seminars, and workshops, the Institute provides a special forum for the coming together of distinguished Africanist faculty, scholars, and students, as well as for the broader community engaged in policy initiatives on Africa.
Situated within Columbia University’s School of the Arts, the Master’s of Arts in Film Studies is a three-semester program that treats cinema as an art, an institution, an object of philosophical study, and as an international socio-cultural phenomenon. Since its inception in 2008, over 70 students–from countries including China, Italy, Canada, Iceland, Iran, and more–have graduated from the program. They have gone on to hold positions in fields such as film curation and criticism, as well as attended prominent PhD programs around the world.
In its most recent report, The National Research Council rated Columbia as the foremost institution in the nation for art history scholarship, recognizing a legacy of excellence in The Department of Art History and Archeology. Like New York City, the art history curriculum encompasses many different cultures. It is also interdisciplinary in its scope, encouraging students to explore the central role of the visual arts on religion, politics, gender relations, urbanism, and in all other domains of human experience in which works of art inspire, disturb, or energize the imagination.