4th April 2011: Upcoming film treats care of the festival and Migration Week at UCL

Lucy Special: 12th RAI Film Festival

Image from About a Village
(dir. John.C.Swanson 2011)

The 12th RAI film festival is fast approaching, hosted by University College London between 23-26th June 2011. Until the 15th May, it’s possible to get a special ‘early bird’ rate, along with in-depth detail of films being shown and associated events. Details can be found at www.raifilmfest.org which is being constantly updated as information comes in ‘on the wire’. I checked it out and got a flavour of the global filmic delights in store and started planning!


As films are grouped according to categories of professional and student prizes, I started by looking at the general areas of anthropological discussion represented. Engagement with the experience of globalised humanity is a definite thread; reaching far beyond any sense of holism to explore the play of social and cultural mixing and movement. The strand which most speaks to this addresses migration which I’ll be following throughout Friday. This is, appropriately enough, moving around the venues, creating a journey within the journeys and travels from Italy with ‘Me, My Gypsy Family and Woody Allen’ (Laura Halilovic) and ‘Other Europe’ (Rossella Schillaci) through Germany and Hungary in ‘About a Village’ (John.C.Swanson) to arrive in Switzerland and ‘For Love’ (Isabelle Stuessi). For me, though, the ‘must-see’ looks fascinating as well as having a clever play on a mainstream title, which is ‘No Country for Young Men’ (Sadaf Javdani) which is shot across multiple sites of migratory experience in Iran, Berlin and London.

All the films, made over the past couple of years, tie-in nicely with UCL’s ‘Migration Week’ event (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/intercultural-interaction/migration-week) which started on Monday and has a series of lectures, panel discussions, and conferences exploring topics ranging across the fields of health, economic and social challenge, policy, and the EU Migration Package. An accompanying exhibition explores, amongst other things, the contagious-sounding ‘Egyptomania’ and the ‘Filming Migration’ event on 6th April 2011 is showing five films with a panel discussion. All events are free, requiring no registration so I’m going to brush up on my migration knowledge before I pack my anthro passport and hop on board the good ship RAI film fest ;)