LUVE 2022

Toang is an intimate portrait of a rice paddy farmer (Edi Sutaryadi) and his family in Indramayu, Indonesia, who were in a precarious situation due to the cycle of indebtment and environmental degradation that the Green Revolution brought to Indonesia.

Director statement

Climate change has posed serious problems to many Indonesian as the country is proven to be very vulnerable to its impact. I am from Indonesia myself, and I have been experiencing and seeing firsthand the impact of climate change in Indonesia. Many people in Indonesia are very dependent on their natural resources and environment. The slightest disturbance in nature might create dire consequences. Food security is one of the most affected by climate change as climate change continues to interrupt agricultural practices, which could endanger national stability. Therefore, it is some sort of a moral obligation for me to create a film about climate change and its impact on the farmers in Indonesia. I realize that I have the privilege to study abroad which not many Indonesian are able to do. I have to translate this privilege into something that can be helpful for the people in Indonesia and other places as well that are most vulnerable to climate change. Through this research, I hope, I could express my field or filming experience into a compelling message for others and also provide ethnographic knowledge relating to climate change that might be useful for future research or studies in this field.

People say water is life, so how could there be life where there is no more water? For the past two decades, the rural village of Peña Blanca (Chile) has suffered the devastating consequences of rising temperatures and growing drought. El Secano Aún Vive shows how daily life in the village has become despairingly dull and anticipates a future that remains uncertain if nothing changes. But in an environment that seems unable to support life of any form, it’s the few people that live in it who prove that the drylands are not dead yet.

Director statement

With El Secano Aún Vive I hoped to find a balance between imagination and investigation, which I believe to be the best response to many problems that our planet is currently facing. One of these problems, the one that interests but also scares me the most, is portrayed in this film. Prior education has provided me with practical knowledge on environmental issues, which I have tried to incorporate in this film, but above all I simply wanted to show the horrible consequences of globally rising temperatures and growing drought in a part of the world that to us might seem too far away to care for.

Dutch youth with a migrant background, especially from ‘deprived’ neighborhoods, often tend to be labelled as problematic. This made me wonder: how do youth themselves experience these labels? In order to gain insight into the experiences of the youth, I asked them to tell me stories. Stories about how they see their neighborhood. Stories about how they think others see their neighborhood. Stories about childhood memories, positive or negative. The result of these stories is captured in an exhibition that combines audio, video and photo and represents how these youth deal with stigmas about themselves and the places they live in.

Director statement

With this project I wanted to show a more nuanced image of places and people that are often represented one-sided. Also, I found it important to display the voice of the youth, as it contains much power but often remains unheard. Although anthropology is always a work in progress, and so is this project, I hope that my work inspires people to look and think beyond their initial assumptions.

heem is a young, green, creative space of reflection and contemplation, in the intersection of various religions and philosophies of life. as covid-19 brought activities to a halt, i discovered heem through the place, the gardens of the abbey of egmond, and the people surrounding and sustaining heem. the slow, intentional nature of analogue film motivated the choice for an analogue photobook – handbound at the abbey – to reflect my journey of getting to know heem.

Postcolonial Sentiments is an interactive website concerning the way colonial history has shaped contemporary relations between Curaçaoan and Dutch inhabitants of Curaçao. I have conducted a 10-week period of visual ethnographic research on Curaçao, focused on interviewing and photography. I have 22 recorded interviews, in which I asked people about the contemporary relation between Dutch and Curaçaoan inhabitants, and how they relate to colonial history. A selection of these interviews with corresponding portraits are presented on the website. The purpose of the project is to create understanding and to raise awareness about the legacy of Dutch colonialism on Curaçao.

After performing fieldwork at the Hatertse and Overasseltse fens, I translated the walks and talks I had with my participants into an interactive website. Various topics come together at this place, such as climate change, knowledge backgrounds, conflict, and a variety of eccentric Dutch nature. Come join my participants and me on a shared walk and experience this interesting and, above all, beautiful area full of rare flora and fauna.

The aim of this multi modal zine is to depict the ways in which nostalgia expresses itself when dealing with transnational identities. Nostalgia, as a concept is often described as a ‘loss’ or ‘remembrance’, this project tries to question this idea when intersecting with transnationalism. When ‘home’ is a multitude, nostalgia might be expressed differently. This project took place over 2,5 months spent in Marseille – France, a city with a large community originating from the North-African diaspora. The zine consists of text, analogue photos, audio pieces as well as interactive material elements. By the combination of these modes, a ‘user’ of the zine gets to experience sensorial elements of transnational nostalgia.

In the multimodal zine “How much longer?” you will engage with the process of migrating to the Netherlands and (trying) to obtain a residency. Azzam, Eras, Fatah and Tamba all face bureaucratic challenges that demand a lot of time to solve.

What do you do in the meantime? How are you killing time? How can you take care of your time?

In the zine, the focus lies on the perception of temporalities, on documentation and different forms of power. By using poetry, drawings, video recordings and soundscapes you will engage with daily life snapshots and get a peek into the state’s arm of migration.

Drag Kings and Creatures: On the exploration of one’s gender identity and one’s self-development

Drag Kings and Creatures is a project about drag kings and creatures in The Netherlands.
What does drag kinging mean for someone? What is a drag creature? How can drag contribute to one’s self-development? This project aims to convey the power and complexity of drag and its various forms and expressions through the method of zine-making. I invite you to flip and wander through the pages of my zine and learn more about drag kings and creatures.

Have you ever found yourself slowly falling in love with two people at once? Or felt gleeful while your partner tells you about their new date? In the world of consensual non-monogamy, this is all possible. The short film Multi-Love explores themes of sexuality, romance, family, abuse, identity, and taboo through the eyes of non-monogamists themselves. From January to March 2022, the filmmaker Mowgli Legein conversed with people dabbling in open relationships, established polyamorous households, people in open marriages, and people who have rejected non-monogamy. Their overlapping and contrasting ideas were emphasized through drawings and intertwined with moments from the filmmaker’s own non-monogamous life.

Director Statement

The topic of my film, consensual non-monogamy is both extremely intimate and somewhat controversial. It is something that most people have thought about or have been faced with at some point in their personal lives, but that is still majorly hidden in everyday life. However, over the course of this research, I discovered how many different ways there were to experience and practice non-monogamy. In this film, I tried to render this world through a kaleidoscopic patchwork of thoughts drawings, stories, and moments of consensual-non monogamy.