The Edge Of Belief

Curated and Programmed as part of the NFTS Film Studies, Programming and Curation MA, The Edge of Belief is a programme of films that explores the relationship between premonition, belief and disaster, and how these connect with ideas of the land.

Rich in atmospheric texture and visionary intent, this collection of feature-length and short films from across the world explores how faith, myth and belief have shaped the landscape and the experience of those who live within it, often foretelling disasters to come. The season invites viewers to ponder the ways in which our society dwells between past and future catastrophes: from the precarious relationship forged between a village and its volcano, to a community in the highlands of Lesotho threatened with resettlement to make way for a dam, to a suite of parables on disaster and dispossession in the American mid-west. This four-part programme culminates with the UK premiere of Rhayne Vermette’s Ste. Anne, an allegorical reclamation of land through personal, symbolic, and historical sites all across Treaty 1 Territory, the heartland of the Métis Nation. Diverse in form, geography and voice, these are films in which memories of the future and fragments of the past converge; films that provoke questions on how to orientate ourselves in an unstable world.

Featuring omens, auguries, premonitions or prophets, the films in this programme cast a spell of resilience and resistance in the face of environmental degradation and capitalist-imperialist domination.

This four-part programme of experimental, international and nonfiction film will run for one week from 10th - 16th December 2021 at Close-Up Film Centre.

Emily Wright
Programme Curator

Twitter: @edge_ofbelief
Instagram: @edge_ofbelief

Friday December 10th | Programme 1 | Close-Up Cinema | 8.15pm

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An Azorian Myth ,
Dir: Aylin Gökmen | 2020 | 14 mins
This is not a Burial, it's a Resurrection
Dir: Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese | 2019 | 117 mins

Awarded the Special Jury Prize for Visionary Filmmaking at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese’s bold and distinctive feature is an extraordinary and otherworldly confrontation between the forces of tradition and progress. When a village in the highlands of Lesotho faces resettlement to make way for a dam, it is an 80-year-old widow who rallies her fellow villagers to fight for the land. Unfolding like a surrealist fable, but rooted in the reality of the ‘‘Highlands Water Project’’, This is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection (2019) marks the arrival of a major filmmaker and the departure of an astonishing actress.

Preceded by Aylin Gökmen’s evocative short documentary set on an atemporal volcanic island, where the inhabitants similarly rely on myth and religious beliefs to interpret their precarious situation. Shot in striking black-and-white, Spirits and Rocks: An Azorian Myth (2020) situates itself outside of time, in memory and mythology.

Commissioned essay ''Survival is in the Mouth'' Grief & Disaster Storytelling in This is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection by Chrystel Oloukoi, available in accompanying programme zine.

Sunday December 12th | Programme 2 | Close-Up Cinema | 6.00pm

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Short Films
Two collections of short films, different in tone, form the basis of this programme, with a short intermission.

Shorts Programme #1 (48mins):

Burning Mountains That Spew Flame
Dir: Samuel M. Delgado & Helena Girón | 2016 | 14 mins
Gulyabani
Dir: Gürcan Keltek | 2018 | 34 mins

Journey through physical, political and spiritual landscapes in two short films exploring memory and resilience: Spanish duo Delgado and Girón’s experimental documentary Burning Mountains That Spew Flame and Turkish filmmaker Gürcan Keltek’s Gulyabani. In their mythical visions, both films skirt the edge of fiction, while never relinquishing a claim to reality.

Intermission - 10mins

Shorts Programme #2 (60mins):

KG
Dir: Cynthia Madansky | 2018 | 10mins
Black Beauty
Dir: Grace Ndiritu | 2021 | 29mins
I Hope I’m Loud When I’m Dead
Dir: Beatrice Gibson | 2019 | 21 mins

Three artist moving image films that turn to the figure of the ‘‘poet as prophet’’ and ‘‘poet as guide’’, to translate the moral chaos and violence around us. At the forefront of our move towards change, who but the figure of a poet, a political, activist poet, could address the pervasive, multi-layered crisis of our times?

Wednesday December 15 | Programme 3 | Close-Up Cinema | 8.15pm

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The multiple layers of history – the official, the mythical and everything in between –form the focus of this screening featuring the UK premiere of Colectivo Los Ingrávidos’ Sensemayá (2021) and Deborah Stratman’s much-acclaimed essay film The Illinois Parables (2016). Though wildly different in their approach, both films speak to major themes and narratives of identity in the Americas, probing how particular archetypes and myths are rearticulated and reshaped across time.

In The Illinois Parables, artist and filmmaker Deborah Stratman uncovers tales of disaster, dispossession and renewal in the oft-overlooked landscape of her Midwestern home state: from the expulsion of the Cherokee and other Indian tribes along the Trail of Tears in the 1830s; to the catastrophic tornadoes of 1925; to Macomb, where a number of homes inexplicably caught fire in the 1950s.

The film is preceded by Sensemayá, a shamanic composition, an ecstatic dance, and ritualistic spell from radical Mexican filmmaking collective, Colectivo Los Ingrávidos. Shifting from the poetic to the unsettling and the foreboding, Sensemayá contorts and repeats its patterns like an ancient snake, pulsating images that feel out of time, encompassing the past, the present and the future.

Commissioned essay ''In The Same River'': Sensemayá and The Illinois Parables by Emma Piper-Burket, available in accompanying programme zine.

Thursday December 16th | Programme 4 | Close-up Film Centre | 8.15pm

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Ste. Anne
Rhayne Vermette | Canada | 80 mins | UK Premiere

Described as ‘‘Paris, Texas set in Treaty 1 Territory’’, the award-winning debut feature of Canadian Métis filmmaker and artist Rhayne Vermette will close the season. Unbounded by the conventions of narrative cinema, Ste. Anne (2021) immerses the viewer in the sounds, textures and atmosphere of her native Manitoba, and anchors its eerie narrative in a young woman’s return to her indigenous Métis community. As her arrival unsettles her family and wider community, Reneé begins to form dreams from fragments of her past, and ominous premonitions disrupt the land.

Commissioned by the Indigenous-led COUSIN Collective and shot on 16mm over the course of 14 months, Rhayne Vermette’s oblique and impressionistic experimental feature narrative has been acclaimed at festivals worldwide. We are delighted to present the film’s first showing in the UK.

Commissioned essay ''Intimate Territory: Rematriating Land and Narrative in Ste. Anne'' by Gwynne Fulton, available in accompanying programme zine.

We'd like to thank Aya Films, Close-Up Film Centre, LUX and all the individual filmmakers and artists for providing the films for the programme.