Celebrating With Friends

Week 25: Notes

After sending out invitations to my female friends so many responded with gifts of their own films or suggestions that I decided to split one big party into two smaller ones according to Covid19 safety measures in real life that don’t allow for more than ten people to be together inside at the same time. Everybody that came to the first celebration is currently living and working in Vienna.

The party started  with  baile funk  from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro chosen by Austrian social anthropologist Susanne Senekowitsch, Austrian-Australian artist, filmmaker and  performer Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll brought her performance commemorating Tupaia, the Tahitian navigator, translator and priest who travelled with Captain Cook’s ship Endeavour on his first voyage. Susanne Wernsing, German historian and independent curator, contributed VV Brown’s strong message about cultural masking followed by Chilean–Mexican–Lebanese choreographer and dancer Amanda Piña with her latest work from the series Endangered Human Movements. M.I.A.’s music video that Jeannine Baillieu, German DJ and author, brought along ended the 25-week film festival celebration:

‘I fly like paper, get high like planes

If you catch me at the border I got visas in my name

If you come around here, I make ’em all day

I get one done in a second if you wait.’