Sheffield Doc/Fest: Ghosts & Apparitions program

June 2020
Ghosts & Apparitions Program

An old question for humans is ‘how can we make visible what is invisible, sometimes only somatic, sometimes a faded memory, sometimes just a dream’? In our programme, transitional processes are present and relevant: from forgetfulness to remembrance, from past into present, from the individual into the collective realms. Architecture and political iterations of space in Concrete Forms of Resistance, This Means More or The Kiosk; memories and the materialization of haunting stories in The Tunnel, Deep Waters, Aganai, They Whisper But Sometimes Scream, Truth or Consequences, The Metamorphosis of Birds, Santikhiri Sonata; love and death in Mon Amour, Point and Line in Plane, Dying Under Your Eyes. Work, in relation to the mourning of a known order of things – a community of miners in Spain in Work Or to Whom Does the World Belong, or a lost Russia hijacked by global resource exploitation in Karabash. Ghosts & Apparitions is also about experimenting with the cinematic forms and narratives, questioning what documentary can be. Frem is a voyage outside the anthropocentric perspective over landscape and nature, and All That Is Forgotten In An Instant builds an intricate journey between words, translations, and political landscapes. Ascending Ballard Down collates materials for a reflection on art and landscape, and A New England Document brings together a critique of the colonialist tradition of Ethnography and the art of documentation. On A Clear Day You Can See The Revolution From Here explodes official discourses on a country’s context and history. Yãmĩyhex: The Women-Spirit exists within a tradition where the documentation of life follows the materialization of myths and visions. We present an online focus on Lynne Sachs, whose latest film, Film About A Father Who, will be screened in Into the World, in October.