Workshop: Aging Experiences
Location: The exhibition house of the Estonian National Museum, 9 Kuperjanovi St., Tartu. 12:00 to 16:00.
The workshop includes three films and is divided into two sessions.
12:00
Faces of Aging
Faces of Ageing
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Directors: Martin Gruber, Michaela Schäuble; release: 2009; length: 36 minutes
Faces of Aging is an interview film on the often-avoided topic of ageng. The conversations were initially commissioned for the Rich in Wrinkles – Aging Around the World exhibition at the Ethnographic Museum in Leipzig. After the closing of the exhibition the interviews were edited into an omnibus film. Several men, women and couples, commonly considered ‘old’ or ‘elderly’, describe their personal experiences of aging. The conversations touch on experiences of bereavement and loss of partners and friends, loneliness, physical affliction, memories of the past and hopes for the future, dependence and independence, sexuality and new-found love, alternative living arrangements, and ultimately death. This compilation of personal interviews does not embellish the facts and facets of ageing, but the stories told are endearing and convey genuine moments of joy and gratitude for life – all of which make the prospect of ageing seem far from depressing.
Martin Gruber
Martin Gruber is an anthropologist and documentary filmmaker from Hamburg, Germany. He has an MA in Visual Anthropology from Goldsmiths College London, 2003, and a Magister degree in Social Anthropology from Hamburg University, 2005. Martin is currently working as a freelance researcher and filmmaker in Hamburg and around the world. He also teaches university seminars and is preparing a PhD project in the field of visual anthropology.
Michaela Schäuble
Born in 1973 in the Blackforest, Michaela studied anthropology and comparative literature at the universities of Tuebingen (Germany) and Yale (USA). Michaela completed an MA in Visual Anthropology at GCVA in Manchester (UK), and subsequently went on to receive a PhD from Halle (Germany). She is currently working as a lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Halle. She lives in Berlin and continues to make films.
Director: Lucy Kaye; release: 2009; length:
32 minutes
Whilst life is often lonely for people in their 90s, there’s plenty of room in this film of the last Jews living in London’s East End for humour, optimism and beautiful memories. Lily, Cyril, Rose, Hannah and Bleemar may live alone, but once in a while they overcome their isolation and join the rest of their community to let their hair down.
Lucy Kaye
Born in London, Lucy Kaye is a recent documentary graduate of the National Film and Television School, UK. Prior to coming to the school she lived in New York working as a production assistant on a documentary about Roma musicians. She returned to the UK to pursue her interest in documentary filmmaking and after completing an MA in Visual Anthropology at the Granada Centre in Manchester went to work as an Assistant Producer with director Marc Isaacs on two prominant BBC Documentary films. She is currently working on ideas for various newcomer strands for British television.
14:00
Director: O
lga Kornienko; release: 2009; length: 42 minutes
A small Mansi village Treskolje is situated at the foot of the North Ural Mountains. There is still no electricity, lines of communication or roads here. In spring when the river Lozve’s ice begins to melt the village is deprived of its connection with the rest of the world for almost two months. The old woman Shura Anyamova, as the head of her family, is faced with the choice of leaving her home according to the policy of ‘enlargement’, as other members of her extended family have, to live in a large settlement with all the conveniences of ‘civilisation’: transport, electricity, communication, or to stay in the same place keeping her family’s customs and traditions. There is a lack of time to make choice – only one spring remains.
Olga Kornienko
Olga Kornienko has graduated from the Department of Journalism, Kazan State University, and from the Moscow Institute for Raising the Qualifications of Television and Broadcasting Workers. For more than ten years she worked for SurgutInformTV (Surgut, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug – Ugra) as an editor of theme programs, mainly covering the lives of the native population of Ugra. Since 2003 she has been head of the company’s non-fiction film studio, the work of which is divided into three strands: ethnodocumentary films, educational, and historical documentaries. She is the author of more than twenty films. Since September 2008 she has been an associate professor lecturing in the language and literature department (chief – journalism) at Surgut State Pedagogical University. She is the author of many publications about the life and people of Ugra, published in books, journals and other printed matter in Moscow, Finland and Ugra.