25 — 28.05.2016

Fabrizio Terranova Brussels

Donna Haraway: Story Telling for Earthly Survival

cinema — premiere

Beursschouwburg

English → NL, FR | ⧖ 1h30 | € 8 / € 6 | Meet the artist after the film on 27/05

Donna Haraway is a prominent scholar in the field of science and technology, a feminist, and a science-fiction enthusiast who works at building a bridge between science and fiction. She became known in the 1980s through her work on gender, identity, and technology, which broke with the prevailing trends and opened the door to a frank and cheerful trans species feminism. Haraway is a gifted storyteller who paints a rebellious and hopeful universe teeming with critters and trans species, in an era of disasters. Brussels filmmaker Fabrizio Terranova visited Donna Haraway at her home in California, living with her – almost literally, for a few weeks, and there produced a quirky film portrait. Terranova allowed Haraway to speak in her own environment, using attractive staging that emphasised the playful, cerebral sensitivity of the scientist. The result is a rare, candid, intellectual portrait of a highly original thinker.
 

15.05  TALK SHOW With Donna Harraway (live from Santa Cruz) 18:00 EN

16.05  TALK SHOW With Isabelle Stengers 18:00 FR

17.05 TALK SHOW With Houria Bouteldja 18:00 FR

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Story Telling for Earthly Survival

Donna Haraway is one of the strongest and most relevant voices of our age, someone who enables us to think about what is happening to us today by, as I wrote on the occasion of the translation into French of one her books, “producing hope on the brink of the abyss”. She embodies today what can be described as “ecosophical” thinking – acute, demanding, not taking the easy route, but conveying a propositional power we desperately need.

Admittedly Haraway is only starting now to be translated into French, and this delay can be attributed in part to the difficulty of her language. But when she talks, the intensity, humour and sincerity she expresses make this difficulty disappear. Fabrizio Terranova’s film should be a real revelation to anyone who finds her a difficult writer, and should be shown in several places, including research centres and anywhere in the world where tomorrow’s thinking is being worked on.

Fabrizio Terranova’s cinematic choice, a pseudo-realist but discretely fictional one, corresponds very precisely to the mode of presence that makes this portrait a model of integrity. Neither taking over nor offering a neutral opinion, it is a device that constrains Haraway no more than it constrained Josée Andréi, the subject of his first, admirable film, but leaves them to use their own mode of being honest and entrusts in the work of the image the responsibility of turning this recorded document into a co-created documentary work. I am profoundly grateful to this director for knowing how to use his talent, his intelligence and his sensitivity to serve what will be a real transmission of intelligence and emotion. I would also like to emphasise the exceptional confidence that he was able to inspire in Haraway, whose recorded lectures are so far all we know about her, allowing her to give free rein to a “thought” live.

Isabelle Stengers

Starring

Donna Haraway, Rusten Hogness, Cayenne Pepper

Written & directed by

Fabrizio Terranova

Cinematography

Tristan Galand

Sound

Nicolas Lebecque

Film editing

Bruno Tracq
 

Sound design

Frédéric Fichefet

Sound mixing

Cyril Mossé

Music

Laurent Baudoux & The Fan Club Orchestra

Visual effects

Alain Clément, Patrick Theunen

Digital crochet coral reef animation

Clara Sobrino

Process witch

Isabelle Stengers

Producer

Ellen Meiresonne

Co-producer

Olivier Marboeuf, Javier Packer-Comyn

Associate producer

Fabien Siouffi

Presentation

Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Beursschouwburg

Production

Atelier Graphoui (Brussels)

Co-production

Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Spectre Productions (Rennes), CBA – Centre de l’audiovisuel (Brussels), Fabbula (Barcelona), Rien à Voir (Brussels)

Supported by

Centre du Cinéma et de l’Audiovisuel de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles

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