The God That Destroys. Courtesy of sixpackfilm
Harstad Kino, sal 2
Dette filmprogrammet er kuratert av Abirami Logendran som vil være i samtale med kunstner Jyoti Mistry. (Samtalen vil bli på engelsk og filmene er med engelsk tale og uten undertekster.)
Jyoti Mistry
Born in Durban, South Africa in 1970, she works with film as an interplay between cinematic traditions and installation art. Her films have screened at festivals including Toronto, Winterthur, Rotterdam and Durban and in exhibitions at Kunsthaus Zürich, Museum der Moderne Salzburg and Kunsthalle Wien. She has been artist in residence at the Netherlands Film Academy in Amsterdam and the California College of the Arts in San Francisco and was a member of the International Short Film Jury at the 68th Berlinale. She is currently professor for film at the University of Gothenburg.
Films: The God That Destroys (2026), Loving in Between (2023), Cause of Death (2020), When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Black Man (2017), Impunity (2014), 09:21:25 (2011), Le Boeuf Sur Le Toit (2010), I mike what I like (2006), We remember differently (2004)
The God That Destroys, (2026), 17:00
The God That Destroys looks at the legacy of Swedish colonialisation of the Sámi people as an ever-perpetuating cycle of forced assimilation, cultural oppression and extractivist exploitation. Jyoti Mistry uses archival sources from the first half of the 20th century, newly shot 16mm footage that mimics the archive and animation to create a tapestry that intertwines Sámi cosmology with commentary on capitalist destruction. The story is told by the Siren of the Future, performed by Sara Ajnnak through traditional Sámi yoik and voice over as well as original songs performed by the Gothenburg Opera´s Children´s Choir.
This film is not an exploration of Sámi cultural identity but comes from a position of solidarity and shared experiences that Jyoti Mistry brings from her own experience of growing up in and being schooled during apartheid South Africa. By introducing an outsider´s perspective to this history as well as putting this legacy of oppression into a bigger global colonial context, the film is a comment on the cyclic nature of exploitation. (Director's Statement)
Cause of Death, Jyoti Mistry, (2020) 20:00
Women’s bodies are always at risk. An autopsy report describes the physical impact on the body that results in death but hides the structural and recurrent violence on women’s bodies that leads to femicide. Through archival film footage, animation and spoken word poetry an experience of structural violence against women is exposed. (Berlinale catalogue 2020)