Fresh Eyes on the World

Tuesday 30 January | 8PM

We will be hosting a screening of short documentaries at the Bertha DocHouse in Curzon Bloomsbury. The Fresh Eyes on the World line-up will include short films directed and filmed by our Production Fund grantees.

These documentaries focus on issues that highlight our common humanity, and cover topics including transgender Muslims, Sudanese inventors, female entrepreneurs in post-conflict Tripoli, forgotten Burmese soldiers, and young Iraqis infatuated with Korean culture.

The screening will be followed by networking drinks and a Q&A with the featured filmmakers.

FILMMAKERS & FILMS

Aghnia Adzkia – The Transgender Muslims
Members of Al Fatah Islamic boarding school for transgender people in Yogyakarta, Indonesia are vitriolically assailed by militant group Front Jihad Islam (FJI) over their ways of practising Islam. FJI believes the school is defying religious norm of Islam and their prayers are futile. In February 2016, the school was shuttered amidst controversy and threats. However, holding the freedom of having belief and expressing views and thought protected by the constitution, the transgender Muslims keep secretly running the school. They perform prayers, recite the Quran and discuss the Islamic law book – Bulughul Maram.

Lucy Provan – Sudan: Seeds of Inspiration
Hatem and Mohammed are two Sudanese inventors determined to stop the desert from swallowing up their country. They are obsessed with drones and robots and even though they are isolated by international sanctions and frustrated by a failing economy they succeed in building Sudan’s first robot farmer. They decide to take part in a local inventor’s television competition to raise awareness and investment in their dream – Sudan’s first and only agricultural drone company. Their drone can plant trees, increase harvests and reduce crop damage. And they are bound by their shared belief that Africa can change its destiny with technology.

Luke Radcliff – Burma’s Forgotten Army
Native troops played a fundamental role in bringing an end to WW2 in Burma in 1945. Their sacrifices however became a mere footnote in tales of the ‘Forgotten Army’. Meanwhile the impacts of the war would rage on into modern Myanmar. Differing war-time allegiances contributed towards ‘the longest-running armed conflict in the world’ (Thant Myint-U) and many still refer to Myanmar as a country where WW2 never ended. As they enter their final years, this film hears from some of the veterans who fought in the brutal campaign.

Alice Rowsome – Khadra
Khadra خضراء is a short documentary that follows four women in Tripoli, Lebanon, who are using recycling to transform and bring together the city’s Alawite and Sunni communities after the Syrian conflict reignited tensions and hundreds of people were killed in violent clashes. Although the fighting stopped in 2014, Tripoli remains scarred by the violence, poverty and corruption. Unfazed by the enormity of the issue, a group of women from Jabal Mohsen have decided to start a recycling project to mobilise people to clean up their streets. The film will follow the women on their journey to form a recycling partnership between neighbourhoods with a history of extreme tension and violence.

We will be showing a teaser – Alice is still following the project and the film is due to be completed in 2019.

Arij Al-Soltan – Korean Lovers in Baghdad
A young Iraqi woman’s obsession with all things Korean inspires her every move as she seeks to study in South Korea. Her mission is rife with challenges but she is not alone; a growing number of young Iraqis are looking to South Korea to re-imagine an alternative future for themselves, and for the country.

TIME: Arrive at 8PM for an 8:30PM start
DATE: 30 January 2018
LOCATION: Bertha DocHouse
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