Category Archives: Nyheter

Hynek Pallas The Devil Finds Work

Throughout his life James Baldwin had a strong relationship with the film medium and dreamed of becoming a director. As a writer he came to reflect his own life and the American race issue through Hollywood movies. Based on Baldwin’s book “The Devil Finds Work” from 1976, Hynek Pallas talks about the authors film criticism, and how he analyzed society and the psychological needs of white America in it.

Hynek Pallas holds a PhD in Film studies. His dissertation “Whiteness in Swedish Cinema 1989-2010” was published in 2011. Pallas is a director, author and a critic for Göteborgs-Posten. His latest books deal with migration and the Roma in Central Europe.

Bongo Riot Gbg + Kampire

Labbe Grimelund and Finn Björnulfson are known as the drummer and percussionist in Håkan Hellström’s band. After their concerts with the West Swedish pop icon, at the after parties, they used to jam well into the night, sometimes with whoever happened to be the DJ that evening. Out of chaos and ecstasy a new concept emerged, a witches’ brew of drums, percussion and electronic rhythms. Factory Records and samba in a rattling Gothenburg accent. The step from those after-parties to the club scenes suddenly seemed perfectly logical – Enter Bongo Riot GBG.

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KAMPIRE + BONGO RIOT GBG

One of the hottest new names on Uganda’s dance music scene is the DJ, activist, and writer Kampire Bahana. She is one of the core members of the Nyege Nyege collective, which arranges festivals and parties for those with curious ears as well as alternative lifestyles, as well as releasing experimental rhythm oriented music from East African on the label Nyege Tapes. Those who experienced Kampire’s label mates Bamba Pana & Makaveli at Clandestino Festival in June this year can testify about a legendary night where the dance floor was sweating to a marathon performance of 180 BPM and faster.

Born to Ugandan parents, Kampire grew up in Zambia’s copper belt, a place that gathered miners from near and far. There she soon discovered music and culture from all over the African continent, which would come to inspire her DJ sets: Kampire blends modern and traditional styles into an irresistible pan-African dance party. Tropical bass, kuduro, South African house, soukous and afrobeat … powerful, bass heavy music that won’t settle until everybody’s butt is shaking.

JYOTI MISTRY: “White subjectivity inside the Black experience”

The issue of access or “the right to represent” remains fraught on a number of levels for writers and artists. White writers “speaking” of black experiences are challenged by black writers who question the authenticity of subjectivity or the veracity of pathos across racial identities.

Black writers on the other hand, are expected to draw from immediate lived-experiences or political positions which express racial identity politics with an assumed singularity.

What is considered relevant or “appropriate” subject matter for black writers? What identities presume positions from which subjectivities can be explored and expressed? How do the “observed lived-experiences” feature in the imagination in the work of writers and artists?

In Giovanni’s Room James Baldwin writes about the sexual experiences of white characters in Paris. He says of this decision: ‘‘I certainly could not possibly have—not at that point in my life—handled the other great weight, the ‘Negro problem’.

In this presentation, filmmaker Jyoti Mistry tackles her experience of working through white subjectivities from an experience of blackness. Using her film B.E.D (1998) and sections from Impunity (2014) she offers a set of speculations on how white subjectivity might be expressed from the position of the black experience and its politics thereof. The presentation includes screening and reading.

Jyoti Mistry is Professor in Film at Valand Academy, University of Gothenburg in Sweden. She works with film both as a research form and as a mode of artistic practice. She has made critically acclaimed films in multiple genres. Recent film works: When I grow up I want to be a black man (2017), Impunity (2014), 09: 21:25 (2011), Le Boeuf Sur Le Toit (2010). Her work has screened at numerous festivals including the Toronto International Film Festival, Kurzfilmtage in Winterthur, Rotterdam International Film Festival and Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris.

Select publications include: we remember differently: Race, Memory, Imagination (2012) a collection of essays inspired by her film which explores the complexity of racial identity in South Africa. Places to Play: practice, research, pedagogy (2017) explores the use of archive as an exemplar to rethink colonial images through “decolonised” film practices.

Mistry has been artist in residence in New York City, at California College of Arts (San Francisco), Sacatar (Brazil), at Netherlands Film Academy (Amsterdam) and a DAAD Researcher at Babelsberg Konrad Wolf Film University (Berlin). In 2016 she was recipient of the Cilect (Association of International Film Schools) Teaching Award in recognition for innovation in practices in film research and pedagogy. Currently, she is the principal research investigator on a BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) cross cultural project that explores image-making practices stemming from the geo-economic alliance fostered on trade agreements.