Three short documentaries from Jan Ijäs’s seven-part Waste series are screened at FID Marseille. The 28th edition of the Marseille International Film Festival is held from July 11–17.
The festival marks the world premiere for Waste no. 1 Money (2017) and Waste no. 3 Boom (2017). Waste no. 2 Wreck, previously screened e.g. at Edinburgh Film Festival, will have its French premiere. All films are included in the special screening “Histoires de Portrait“, curated by the director of FID Marseille, film theorist and critic Jean-Pierre Rehm. The programme gathers cinematographic portraits that make people see and hear the articulation between voice and gestures, body and phrases, props and tales.
The screenings of Histoires de Portrait take place on Wednesday, July 12, at 12:00 in Villa Méditerrannée and on Friday, July 14, at 19:30 in Cinéma Les Variétés.
Money shows the inhabitants in Harare slums, Zimbabwe, fighting against the heavy inflation. They conceal banknotes in clothing which causes them to become breeding grounds for bacteria. Thus, the American dollars must be gently washed by the money launders.
Wreck was filmed in 2014 and 2015 in the graveyard for refugee boats on the Italian island of Lampedusa. It is a story about how the value of garbage and rubbish can surprisingly change.
Boom was shot in Kittilä in northern Finland, in a ‘lunar landscape’ on top of a hill where the Finnish armed forces annually disposes of expired explosives. Calculations show that detonation is the least expensive method of disposal. During a weeklong camp a total of 1.2 million kg of explosives are destroyed. The explosion safety area is seven kilometres. The explosion produces a mushroom cloud that reaches up to the lowers clouds and creates a crater about ten metres deep and thirty metres across. In the video, army representatives talk about ‘a hole three majors deep’.
Media artist and filmmaker Jan Ijäs lives and works in Helsinki, Finland. Ijäs works with documentary, fiction and alternative film. The films of Ijäs deal with serious and difficult social themes, like migration into foreign and hostile societies. Ijäs’s films have been shown very widely abroad by over a hundred film festivals and as installations in museums and galleries.
FID Marseille, July 11–17 2017, France
More information: FID Marseille