Volcano Cinema: Short Films

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Volcano Cinema, at Leith Dockers Club on 11th June, is a new short film programme that showcases the diverse ways volcanoes have been documented and reimagined through film.

About Volcano Cinema: Short Films

Listed Under Film Events / Nights Out Events

The programme approaches volcanoes and their metaphoric power from different landscapes, cultural mythologies, and with potency and provocation. All this happening at the legendary Leith Dockers, with live music, just like last year, becoming a new tradition in the festival.

This screening is presented in collaboration between CinemaAttic and the Ixchel Project as part of the Latin Connections Film Festival, and will feature an introduction to the Project by Eliza Calder (University of Edinburgh) and to the film programme by Charlotte Gleghorn (University of Edinburgh). The evening will also include a Live Score performance by legendary Salsa Céltica frontman, Toby Shippey.

Programme:

Clouds Under the Mountain – Adán Ruiz (México, 2020) 16’

Two mountaineers undertake a clandestine expedition to Popocatépetl, one of the most active and dangerous volcanoes on the planet. Faced with the inability to predict explosions, which occur very frequently, surviving or not is a matter of chance. Along the way, the mystique of the landscape manifests itself strongly in these forbidden badlands, and the mountain, the closest point to heaven and divinity, is at the same time, the only window towards the core of the earth.

( ( ( ( ( /*\ ) ) ) ) ) aka Echoes of the Volcano – Charles Fairbanks and Saúl Kak (México, 2019) 18’

This ethnographic excursion is a feast for the eyes paced by the quotidian chorus of sounds in a Chiapan village. Gradually, political themes arise. As it relates the legacy of co-director Saúl Kak’s refugeed forebears, (((((/*\))))) (AKA echoes of the volcano) gives voice to the Zoque struggle for Indigenous sovereignty, against the neoliberal state.

Takanakuy – Gustavo Bockos “Vokos” (Perú, 2023) 19’

In a traditional community high in the Peruvian Andes, a tender relationship between two teenage boys, Fausto and Chaska, leads to a violent confrontation at the annual Takanakuy Festival.

Islands of Fire – Vittorio de Seta (Italy, 1954) Restoration by Bologna in 2019. – 11’

A visually striking documentary portraying life in the volcanic Aeolian Islands of southern Italy. De Seta captures the rituals, rhythms, and risks of communities living in the shadow of fire.

Insulana – Patricia Dauder (Spain, Portugal, 2012) 12’

Inspired by the 1957–58 volcanic eruption in the Azores, Insulana explores the traces left on the island of Faial. Rather than a historical account, the film blends archival footage with new material shot in the artist’s studio and on site, blurring past and present in an evocative visual study.

MERAPI (Silent) – Malena Szlam (Chile, Indonesia, 2021) 8’

A circumlocutory study of Mount Merapi, Indonesia. Shifting back and forth around the volcano, MERAPI is marked by the silent presence of its rumble and lava. Almost always at the centre, the volcano often slips away behind the clouds, a ghost. The work is silently structured around the rippling impression of the volcano on its surrounds: smoke through trees, the breaking of rain against its slopes and the rich fertility of its soils. A work as sensitive to the shift in light through swirls of 16mm grain and atmosphere as it is to what it is like to live within the horizon of the volcano, located near the densely populated Yogyakarta.

All short films include English subtitles.

Content note: Contains depictions of a tragedy

Accessibility:

The hall is wheelchair accessible as it is all on one level, however Leith dockers club not have specific disabled toilets. A wheelchair can fit into the toilets but not the toilet cubicles and all cubicles have grabrails.

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