Young Birds From Strange Mountains / นกแปลกจากหุบเขาประหลาด / Con chim đến từ núi lạ / Burung-burung Muda dari Pegunungan Antah Berantah
Curated by Ferdiansyah Thajib, Hai Nam Nguyen, Thao Ho, Sarnt Utamachote (ษาณฑ์ อุตมโชติ)
Location: Sinema Transtopia, Lindower Str. 20/22, Haus C, 13347 Berlin, Website
This film program accompanies the exhibition Young Birds from Strange Mountains. It aims to spark discussion and reclaim knowledge that is often censored and erased by both nationalist and colonial politics.
Friday, 14.03., 6 pm
Sara (German premiere)
Ismail Basbeth, Indonesia 2023, 99 min. Bahasa Indonesia with English subtitles
Followed by conversation with Asha Smara Darra, Lyza Anggraheni, Charlie Meliala, moderated by Lisabona Rahman (in English)
Sara, a transwoman, has to return to her village to attend the funeral of her father. Once there, she discovers that her mother is severely traumatized by her father’s death, has no memory of her and treats her like a complete stranger. When her attempts to recover her mother’s memories fail miserably, Sara decides to create new memories for her mother by play-acting as her late father, the person she despises the most and the reason she escaped her family a long time ago. (FT)
Asha Smara Darra is an Indonesian fashion designer. In 2023, Asha made her lead acting debut, starring in the titular role of the film Sara. For her performance, Asha won ‘The Best Leading Performance’ at the 2024 Festival Écran Mixtes in Lyon, France.
Charlie Meliala producer of the film Sara (Bosan Berisik Lab)
Lyza Anggraheni producer of the film Sara (Rumah Basbeth Bercerita)
Lisabona Rahman is a Berlin-based film archivist and programmer.
Friday, 14.03., 8.30 pm
Short films: Their Paths Ran in Parallel Across the Miles
Người kiến (The Ant-Man), Việt Vũ, Vietnam, 2018, 27 min. Vietnamese with English subtitles
Thân Thể Rừng Thiêng (Landscape of Our Body), Trâm Anh Nguyễn, Vietnam 2024, 19 min. Vietnamese with English subtitles
Người Chó, Chó Người (Man Dog, Dog Man), A Sông Collective, Mai Huyền Chi, Vietnam 2023, 6 min. No dialogue
Bồng Bềnh (Buoyant), Đoàn Thanh Toàn, Nguyễn Lê Hoàng Phúc, Vietnam 2023, 20 min. No dialogue
Nước Lành Mang Bệnh (Healthy Water with Diseases), Quế aka Nguyễn Đức Hùng, Vietnam 2024, 6 min. Vietnamese with English subtitles
Screening in collaboration with Leipzig Art Residency (LIA).
Followed by a conversation with Quế aka Nguyễn Đức Hùng (in English)
Moving through memories and shifting forms, these four short films trace the thresholds between humans and non-humans, the spiritual and material, past and present. The Ant-Man portrays the search for freedom, depicting the daily life of a homosexual man whose body is inhabited by ants. Landscape of Our Body is a journey of the sacred and the corporeal through a meditation between deviant bodies and nature. In Man Dog, Dog Man a chain of surreal events links a man walking a dog, a nose that turned into a DJ, and villagers who metamorphose through dancing. Buoyant is a tale of a fisherman and a mermaid that draws aesthetic inspiration from the drag community in Sài Gòn, where eroticism, fantasy, and joy serve as strategies of resilience. Healthy Water with Diseases captures the lingering ghosts of war through mosquitoes. Initially screened by Cinema Con Nhà Nghèo and A Sông Collective at Nổ Cái Bùm Festival 2024, the films ultimately ask the question if understanding is necessary to feel connected. (TO)
Quế (aka Nguyễn Đức Hùng) is a self-taught visual artist and independent producer from Đà Nẵng. His practice explores the influence of urbanization on the human and natural environment, generational trauma and post-heritage legacy in social exchange time. Currently he is an artist resident at LIA Leipzig.
Saturday, 15.03., 6 pm
Short films: When the Royal Descends to Flirt with Passersby
White Butterflies – Bạch Hồ Điệp, Catherine T. Nguyen, US, Vietnam 2024, 19 min. Vietnamese with English subtitles
Spring Will Come, Marion Hoang Ngoc Hill, US, Vietnam 2024, 17 min. Vietnamese with English subtitles
The Memory of Sky is Enough, Viet Le, Vietnam 2024, 35 min. Vietnamese with English subtitles
Followed by a live Chinese fortune-telling / astrology reading by Le Mai Ai (in Vietnamese with English translation)
Đạo Mẫu (Mother Goddess Religion), a shamanic practice in Vietnam which was once deemed superstitious and banned until 1987, is now experiencing a revival in contemporary society. More than just a spiritual tradition, Đạo Mẫu embodies strong feminist ideals and holds significance in precolonial queer history, as its shamans—predominantly male—performed rituals by channeling female deities. In White Butterflies – Bạch Hồ Điệp, May, a Vietnamese American, returns to her family in Vietnam to mourn her mother’s death. As she confronts her family’s past, she seeks to understand why her mother chose to stay behind, leaving her daughter across the ocean. Spring Will Come follows Saigonese DJ Van Anh and her girlfriend Ly as they struggle to end their relationship. Their emotional pain is disrupted by the arrival of a mysterious woman who seeks to free the spirit of her lost father from their apartment. The Memory of Sky is Enough remixes the high-energy, high-stakes, centuries-old hầu bóng ceremonies, to re-envision chronic illness and disability. By reconnecting queer rituals in Southeast Asia, its diasporas, and worlds beyond, Viet Le asks: Is illness an initiation? Is pathology a power?
The screening will be accompanied by two Ziwei Doushu (Chinese fortune-telling) reading sessions by Master Le Mai Ai. Viewers will be randomly selected through their seat numbers after the film. To participate, attendees must provide their birth date and the hour of their birth.
Le Mai Ai is a Vietnamese Ziwei Doushu master who lives in Berlin.
Saturday, 15.03., 8.30 pm
วิมานหนาม (The Paradise of Thorns) (German premiere)
Naruebet Kuno, Thailand 2024, 131 min. Thai with English subtitles
Dessert made with durian* will be served before the screening (*the smell of durian may be too pungent for some)
Content advisory: accident trauma, explicit violence, sexual content
Reflecting on the recently passed bill of marriage rights for LGBT+ persons in Thai parliament, this film stands as a testament to the battles queer activists have fought for decades. It rightfully exemplifies the fictionalized but true case of a gay couple: Thongkam and Sek who built a paradise of durian orchards and promised each other an eternity. As homosexual partners without equal rights, when one of them died the other had to fight against the world that came crashing down on him. This tragedy is similarly reflected in Ray Yeung’s recent film All Shall be Well which zooms in on the tension between chosen and biological kin. June Kim of Toronto Film Festival wrote: “As with the durian flowers that need an extra touch to pollinate, it’s imperative to build the right foundations to bear fruit. Thailand’s recently passed same-sex marriage bill — the first in Southeast Asia — is hopefully the first of many.” (SU)
The Curators:
Ferdiansyah Thajib is a Berlin-based researcher and educator who is a member of KUNCI Study Forum & Collective in Yogyakarta (Indonesia). Currently he is a Senior Lecturer at the Elite Graduate Program “Standards of Decision-making Across Cultures,” University of Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Germany.
Hai Nam Nguyen is a curator based between Germany and Vietnam. His work focuses on topics such as Vietnamese migration history in Germany, and queerness in Southeast Asian context. He is currently guest curator at the Museum for Asian Art at Humboldt Forum.
Thao Ho is a researcher and archivist. She is a PhD candidate at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin as part of the research project “Tales of the Diasporic Ordinary” led by Prof. Dr. Elahe Haschemi Yekani. Her research focuses on memory and alternative modes of archiving.
Sarnt Utamachote (ษาณฑ์ อุตมโชติ) is a Southeast Asian nonbinary filmmaker and curator based in Berlin. They curated “In Nobody’s Service” at Galerie Wedding and was a part of the team of “Echoes of the Brother Countries” at HKW Berlin. They also work as a film programmer at Short Film Festival Hamburg and XPOSED Queer Film Festival Berlin.
Foto: Asha Smara Darra in “Sara”.
