DER Documentary

Future Remembrance

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by Tobias Wendl and Nancy du Plessis
color, 55 min, 1998

temporarily out of stock

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A delightful, exuberant, documentary about the role of photography, photographers and the art of image making in Ghana. We meet the photographers, sculptors and painters who tell us in their own words about the economic, social, cultural, aesthetic, and spiritual motivations of their work. Innovation and improvisation abound, from the traveling photographer who has been making and selling his own cameras out of wood and scrap since the 1930's to the studio photographers who specialize in providing elaborate backdrops that inspire their customers poses. Families commission life-size, lifelike, powerful sculptures of loved ones, crafted from small photographs as reference, to honor and remember the dead. Issues of gender arise when we realize all the artists and photographers are men but their customers are both men and women. The influence of American print media on local artists exists but the resulting work is so transformed in the process that the original source is almost unrecognizable. Highly recommended for African studies, media and culture studies, art and ritual, and gender.

Film Festivals, Screenings, Awards
Margaret Mead Festival 1998
Göttingen International Ethnographic Film Festival
ICAES Film Program Selection
Award For Excellence Society for Visual Anthropology
Award, Vitas Folklore Film Festival, UCLA

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