CinemARC: Borderzone
Join us for an evening of films and discussion on the theme of border zones.
ARC Public
Date: Thursday 01 February 2024
Time: 18:30 - 20:30
Venue: University of Glasgow, Advanced Research Centre (ARC), 11 Chapel Lane, Glasgow, G11 6EW
Category: Films and theatre, Public lectures, Social events
Provocations on belonging and displacement through film and artistic practice
Join us for the first CinemARC event of 2024. This selection of short films speaks to the prompt ‘Borderzone’. In companion to the films, we will be joined by a panel of speakers to discuss the historical and contemporary filmic contexts of global border zones and the significance of borders in imagined and physical space.
The Finnish word Rajavyöhyke translates as border zone. Signs that line an 800-mile border, cross the forests and lakes of Finland and Russia, and thus designate who belongs and where. This screening programme and discussion forum aims to generate urgent and timely conversations on the personal and political, solidarity and statelessness, shelter and hostility.
The event brings together international, and Glasgow based filmmakers, academics and community partners. Border zones may be imagined in terms of geographical location or community, the family unit or the body. The complexity of this term derive from its tangled definitions and thus border zones simultaneously occupy the physical, spatial, social and geopolitical realm.
This screening programme also asks how creative film practice effectively articulates diverse and shifting perspectives on European and international border zones. In diverse ways each intervention is designed to provoke questions on selfhood and national identity, place and belonging and the lasting implications of flight and return. The event opens up possibilities for activity and reflection through voice, the lens and screen technologies.
Films
Singing in the Wooden House | Kirsten Adkins | 35min
Included in this project is a new film based in Eastern Finland by the Glasgow University based artist and academic Kirsten Adkins. In April 2023 she travelled alone with a camera to a wooden house near the border town of Imatra, in the region of Karelia. The area was fought over during the Winter War between 1939 and 1940, and the Continuation War between 1941 and 1944. Her mother and her family, who lived in the house were neither Finnish nor Russian. They were exiled to Sweden and never returned: some 400,000 people were evacuated as the border between Finland and the Soviet Union shifted.
With a new war in Europe, Kirsten’s film Singing the Wooden House articulates an increasing tension between opposing geopolitical forces. This year, Finland joined NATO. Sanctions were issued against Russia and the wooden house now owned by a family from St Petersburg is once again abandoned. In November 2023, at the time of writing, Finland closed the entire border to Russia, for the first time in its history. There is an unsettling stillness and marked absence of people near the rajavyöhyke – or border zone. A few voices carry across the lakes and forests – it is unclear whether they are Russian or Finnish.
More films to be announced soon
Filmmaker Biography
Kirsten Adkins
Kirsten Adkins is an artist and filmmaker who has a professional background in documentary television. Kirsten’s filmmaking and writing practice is concerned with stories of home, belonging and migration. She is currently working on a forthcoming edited anthology (Routledge 2024), and curated project space that is concerned with ways that artists and filmmakers use hybrid practices in film, poetry, song and dance to provoke questions on place, identity and belonging. Her interdisciplinary practice is informed by her work in news and factual programmes at the BBC where she worked as a producer and director. Kirsten has exhibited, presented, published, and broadcast nationally and internationally. She teaches experimental filmmaking and artists moving image at the University of Glasgow.
kirsten.adkins@glasgow.ac.uk | https://www.kirstenadkins.co.uk
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This event is free, but ticketed.
You will be permitted to one drink on arrival, while stocks last.
You are welcome to bring your own food, but please take any rubbish away with you.
If you have any access requirements, please email ARCEngage@Glasgow.ac.uk.
Please enter the ARC via the main entrance, as indicated on the map below.