KUKK – Culture Critique Club

The joint film club of the Department of Hungarian Ethnography and Anthropology at Babeș–Bolyai University and the Tranzit Foundation presents this year’s open seminar of the Critical Cultural Studies course:

Mentors: Biró Botond, Erőss Réka, Plájás Ildikó Zonga, Seprődi Attila

Academic coordinator of the seminar: Csilla Könczei, cultural researcher, associate professor

The first film of the club:
Plájás Ildikó Zonga: Swamp Dialogues (2015, 53’)
The screening will be followed by a discussion with the filmmaker. The discussion will be held in Hungarian.
The Danube Delta in Romania - the ‘Last European Sanctuary’ - is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. While major efforts are made to protect biodiversity, the plight of local communities is largely overlooked. Social scientists claim that the traumatic nature of the swamp bears heavy on the villagers’ lives. But is Nature really to blame? Swamp dialogues is based on extensive field-research in the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve. Through a careful ‘argument montage’ built entirely on cinematic language the film represents an anthropological analysis formulated in image and sound.

Awards:
Best Student Film: ASTRA Film Festival 2015, Sibiu (Romania)
Best Feature Film: Festival Pêcheurs du Monde 2016, Lorient (France)
Prize of the Žilina Region: ETNOFILM Čadca 2016 (Slovakia)
Best Medium-long Documentary: HERITALES Film Festival 2017, Évora (Portugal)

Trailer:
https://youtu.be/GKUOFVjkGdw

Plájás Ildikó Zonga graduated in 2005 from the Department of Hungarian Ethnography and Anthropology at Babeș–Bolyai University. Later on she studied cultural studies and visual anthropology in Hungary and at Leiden University in the Netherlands. She obtained her PhD at the University of Amsterdam, where she currently works as an assistant professor.

The event is free of charge. Everyone is warmly welcome.