A film program focused on climate change in collaboration with SALT
As part of the 2024 summer film program, the Lumbardhi Foundation, in collaboration with Salt, presents a selection of “Is this our last chance?”, a decade-long film program calling attention to climate change and its vast impact on humans, nature, and the world.
Initiated in 2015 by Salt, the program encourages reconsideration of people’s actions on the environment and biodiversity through talks and documentary screenings from various geographies exploring diverse themes, actions, and inquiries into environmental issues related to climate change.
The documentary From the Wild Sea (2021) focuses on the collision between humans and nature, offering perspectives from both sides; we get to explore solitary life in Geographies of Solitude (2022), singularly portrayed by an environmentalist. From capturing the disappearance of the scientific caretakers of nature in Fauna (2023), we jump to new ways of labor organization in a goldmine factory in Utopia Revisited and then to rethinking nature as the sole provider of life continuation in Longyearbyen, A Bipolar City (2016). From economics to survival, we explore the nature and social hierarchies in Mothers of the Land to seed worldwide transportation in Wild Relatives (2018), where layered experiences spanning economics, survival, and environmental issues are explored.
The program is presented in collaboration with Salt, founded by Garanti BBVA, with the support of the European Cultural Foundation and the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport.
Program:
July 2024
07.07.2024
FROM THE WILD SEA
Directed by Robin Petré
Denmark, 2021 – Documentary – 78 min.
From the Wild Sea is a poetic documentary film that zooms in on the complex collision between humans and nature. It takes us on a disturbing and fascinating journey into the emerging Anthropocene Era, seen from both the human and animal perspectives.
13.07.2024
GEOGRAPHIES OF SOLITUDE
Directed by Jacquelyn Mills
Canada, 2022 – Documentary – 104 min.
Environmentalist Zoe Lucas has cataloged flora and fauna on Sable Island, a thin strip of land off the Canadian coast, for decades. Zoe, the island’s only full-time human inhabitant, embarks on solitary excursions to observe the dunes, starry skies, wild horses, and washed-up plastic waste.
17.07.2024
FAUNA
Directed by Pau Faus
Spain, 2023 – Documentary – 74 min.
On the outskirts of Barcelona, a farmer and his herd live next door to a hi-tech lab that performs animal testing. The farmer—suffering from a bone disease—witnesses the disappearance of his profession, while the scientists are busier than ever.
31.07.2024
UTOPIA REVISITED
Directed by Kurt Langbein
Germany – 2018 – Documentary – 91 min.
This is a documentary about alternative economic projects like a fair trade goldmine or a tea factory that is owned by its workers.
AUGUST
16.08.2024
MOTHERS OF THE LAND
Directed by Alvaro Sarmiento, Diego Sarmiento
Peru, 2019 – Documentary -74 min.
In the Andean worldview, women and the earth are strongly interrelated. Both are capable of giving and nurturing life. Mothers of the Land accompanies five women in their daily struggle to maintain a traditional and organic way of working the land.
23.08.2024
LONGYEARBYEN, A BIPOLAR CITY
Directed by Manuel Deiller
France - 2016 – Documentary – 56 min.
In the Arctic, the Norwegian city of Longyearbyen, located in the Svalbard archipelago, has been extracting coal for one hundred years as an energetic and economic source, which stirs many environmental paradoxes.
30.08.2024
WILD RELATIVES
Directed by Jumana Manna
Germany, Lebanon, Norway - 2018 – Documentary – 66 min.
Wild Relatives follows the matrix of hierarchies and relationships involved in a seed transaction between the Norwegian town of Longyearbyen in Svalbard, an island in the Arctic Ocean, and the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon.
On March 9th, 2022, Sezin Romi, the Senior Librarian and Archivist at SALT (Istanbul and Ankara, Turkey) will give an online talk in the context of Lumbardhi’s Public Archive project which aims to build an archive collection focusing on Prizren’s modern history. In her presentation, Romi will focus on the required infrastructure for the constitution of archives in the institutional contexts. Discussing the notion of the archive, she will explain the reasons behind archiving and its public use. She will elaborate on processes such as collecting, classification and description, digitization and access policies at SALT Research. Through SALT’s selected research projects, she will examin various methods and the critical importance of archives in the interpretation of art history.
The realization of the talk was made possible with the support of the Goethe-Institut and other partners.
In addition to managing the library Sezin Romi carries out the necessary processes for the research and access of art archives at SALT Research. She was also involved in the research and visualization of SALT’s projects It was a time of conversation (2012-2013), From England with Love, İsmail Saray(2014-2015), Idealist School, Productive Studio (2018), and History of the Painting and Sculpture Museums Association (2022). Having collaborated in the research processes of SALT’s various e-publications, Romi is the co-editor of İsmail Saray (2018) publication.
About SALT and SALT Research
SALT is a not-for-profit cultural institution in public service, engaging in research, exhibitions, publications, web projects, conferences, and other public programs in Turkey. SALT’s programs are distributed at SALT Galata and SALT Beyoğlu buildings in Istanbul. The institution works in the intersections of different disciplines such as visual practices, the built environment, social life, and economic history.SALT Research comprises a specialized library and an archive of physical and digital sources and documents on visual practices, the built environment, social life and economic history. As part of a long-term commitment to digitizing resources at SALT Research, the institution makes documents and sources universally available via saltresearch.org together with the catalog of local access publications.
Lumbardhi Foundation has the pleasure to confirm the continuation of the partnership with the Kosovo Privatisation Agency for the use of Lumbardhi Cinema during 2022.
Established after the civic Initiative for the Protection of Lumbardhi Cinema and the registering of the cinema as a heritage site under temporary protection, this partnership has paved the way for the improvement of the cinema's infrastructure and the preservation of its heritage values. Its usage by over 160 institutions and informal groups which hosted over 100,000 visitors and users, proved the need for its public ownership and its complete revitalisation, to offer a sustainable and long-term future for this institution that was one of the main centers of the social life of Prizren for 70 years.
Lumbardhi Foundation expresses its gratitude to the management of KPA and its responsible officials in Prizren for their understanding and cooperation through these eight years of commitment to fully revive the cinema. In this occasion, we would like to call upon the Municipality of Prizren, Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports, Ministry of Administration of Local Government, as well as the Office of the Prime Minister to conclude the property transfer and cooperate with stakeholders from the civil society to bring a celebratory ending to this long overdue process.
Between December 13-14, Kino Jusuf Gërvalla in Peja hosted the conference "Public Civic Partnership for Reforming Cultural Governance in Kosovo" organized by Anibar within the project "Cultural Spaces of Kosovo".
The project was launched in 2019 as a continuation of previous collaborations between Anibar, Lumbardhi Foundation and Kooperativa - Regionalna platforma za kulturu (Regional Platform for Culture). During four years, the project built a sustainable format for supporting collaborative platforms and networks, the development of programs and conditions for the functioning of cultural spaces in Kosovo, as well as the generation and sharing of knowledge on these matters.
The conference brought together public officials, civil society representatives and actors from the regional independent cultural scene to discuss issues about public financing of culture, revival and governance of cultural spaces and principles of collaboration. Through various discussions and workshops, participants reflected on the current situation of the independent scene and future prospects, while presenting different applications of public-civic cooperation in local and central policies of culture as means of creating new models of institutions and advancing civic participation.
"Cultural Spaces of Kosovo" is a four-year project implemented by Anibar in cooperation with Lumbardhi Foundation, 7 Arte and Pogon, with the finantial support of the European Union Office in Kosovo.
Lumbardhi Foundation in collaboration with Protocinema is pleased to have screened “Permanent Spring, Delayed Bloom”, a video program curated by Aslı Seven.
This is a one-hour program of selected single-channel videos that premiered in Istanbul in June 2021, and then travelled to additional venues worldwide.
The video program showcased works by Sofia Gallisa Muriente, Ahmet Öğüt, Deniz Tortum & Kathryn Hamilton, Hera Büyüktaşçıyan, Emre Hüner and Minia Biabiany that reflect on environments built as "scapes" - landscape, cyberscape, mindscape, mobilizing multiple spatial and temporal scales.
Each film in its own unique texture of language, narrative and technique, comments on our severed relationship to land, climate and bios as permeated by narrative and information technologies, and on the entanglement of labor and entertainment in our global extractivist context. The films in the program jointly emphasize the semiotic agency of tools as sensory, cognitive and physical extensions of humans in fabricating the world we inhabit. Beyond providing a diagnosis about the end of our current world, they ask the question of what is to come, and what are we to make of all the past worlds that have come to an end?
Artist & Artworks List, in order of appearance:
Sofia Gallisa Muriente, Asimilar y Destruir II, 2020, 6'35"
Ahmet Öğüt, Worker's Ordinary Day, 2019, 3'18"
Deniz Tortum & Kathryn Hamilton, ARK, 2020, 13'11"
Hera Büyüktaşçıyan, Infinite Nectar, 2020, 10'55"
Emre Hüner, The Underwater Dig, 2019, 12'
Minia Biabiany, Pawol se van, 2020, 11'46"
The screening took place on 23, 24 and 26 October, in two time slots, at 12:00 and 18:00, at Kino Lumbardhi.
The realization of this program has been supported by Raiffeisen Bank in Kosovo.
Lumbardhi Foundation is excited to be part of the latest publication by Archive Books!
„Not Fully Human, Not Human at All“ centers on a variety of texts, ranging from critical essays, to transcripts of public discussions, to artist texts that focus on artistic and discursive responses to processes of dehumanization that are taking place in Europe. This is situated alongside documentation of the project’s public outcomes at Kunstverein in Hamburg (Germany), Lumbardhi Foundation (Prizren, Kosovo), Kunsthalle Lissabon and Hangar (Lisbon, Portugal), Netwerk Aalst (Aalst, Belgium), and Kadist (Paris, France).
By bringing together a variety of these artistic and cultural positions, the publication gives examples of how dehumanization might be evaluated, critically unpacked—or even overcome—while ultimately proposing that cultural institutions of Europe have a certain political responsibility to respond to processes of dehumanization.
Edited by Bettina Steinbrügge (Kunstverein in Hamburg) and Émilie Villez (KADIST)
Managing editor: Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez and Nicholas Tammens
Graphic: Charlotte Rhode
Distribution: Archive Books
With contributions by: Arely Amaut, Saddie Choua, Andreja Dugandžić, Ibro Hasanović, Jelena Jureša, Kaltrina Krasniqi, Raquel Lima, Olivier Marbouef, Yuderkys Espinosa Miñoso, João Mourão, Arlette-Louise Ndakoze, Daniela Ortiz, Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez, Jelena Petrović, Lala Rašćić, Ares Shporta, Luís Silva, Bettina Steinbrügge, Nora Sternfeld, Pieternel, Vermoortel, Francisco Godoy Vega, Emilie Villez, Zairong Xiang
With works by: Saddie Choua, Valentina Desideri , Denise Ferreira da Silva , Arely Amaut, Nilbar Güreş, Ibro Hasanović, Jelena Jureša, Doruntina Kastrati, Kaltrina Krasniqi, Olivier Marboeuf, Pedro Neves Marques, Christian Nyampeta, Daniela Ortiz, Monira Al Qadiri and Lala Raščić