Double feature : Films by Kidlat Tahimik & Shireen Seno

AROUND SPELLING WORLDS & MAGICAL HACKERISM : Featuring Juan Pablo García Sossa / jpgs

The Art Hub Film Club presented by Juan Pablo García Sossa & Laura Kloeckner will present a selection of films that engage with the emergence of semi-fictional realities as a consequence of the reappropriation of technologies in the tropics. This program is responding to the practices performed within Futura Trōpica Netroos, an InterTropical Net of Grass-Root Local networks connecting practitioners, communities and ecologies in Abya Yala (Latin America), the African continent, South Asia and SouthEast Asia – all meeting each other within the Tropical Belt.

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Programme for this second screening of the season:

Who invented the Yo-yo? Who invented the Moon Buggy?

Kidlat Tahimik 1982, Germany / Philippines, 95 min

Who invented the Yo-yo? Who invented the Moon Buggy? (Sinong Lumikha ng Yoyo? Sinong Lumikha ng Moon Buggy?) (1982) explores Tahimik’s fascination with interplanetary travel, leading him to start a Filipino space program in the fictional German town where he lives. The hero – again played by Kidlat Tahimik himself – teams up with toddlers on a Bavarian farm to work on a spaceship, in order to see if one can play yo-yo on the moon. Yet, the yo-yo was invented in the Philippines, and so the farm near becomes the birthplace of the first Philippine space project, in-short P.O.M.P. Who invented the Yo-yo? Who invented the Moon Buggy? is considered the sequel to his first film, Perfumed Nightmare, and animated by a similar playfulness and resourcefulness as the first.

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A child dies, a child plays, a woman is born, a woman dies, a bird arrives, a bird flies off
Shireen Seno, 2020, Philippines, 18 min.

Originally exhibited as a six-channel installation, this ongoing work is comprised of a series of studies of the migration of birds in and out of the Philippines, a kindred project to a feature-length film inspired by memories of Shireen’s father’s migration to the United States in the early 2000s. Birds, and ducks in particular, are like role models for humans— they find ways to survive by various means across varied terrain. Shireen hopes to bring together a mix of local birds and migratory ones, migrating across different generations of moving image media.

ABOUT SHIREEN SENO

Shireen Seno’s body of work touches on an array of interconnected activity from feature films to multi- screen installations, passing through collective practice, site-specific installations, photographic enquiries, and curatorial excavations. Her work traces our complex relationships with each other, our families, social and political history, media and technology, as well as animal and ecological worlds by engaging deeply with the malleability of images, and how they situate us in the world.

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The films will be presented by Juan Pablo García Sossa, Laura Kloeckner and the director Shireen Seno. The presentation will be in English and both films will be with English subtitles.

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Participation in the screening is free, but it is mandatory to book a seat in advance. Book your seat here.