Nadirah: Coal Woman / Nadirah: Rudarka
Nadirah: Coal Woman / Nadirah: rudarka
Negar Elodie Behzadi, Kate Jessop (The VEM King's College London)
2019, UK, 2’33
In Kante, a small village perched at 2000 metres in the Fann Mountains of Tajikistan, the work of the 19 women miners who go mining everyday in the illegal coal mines is considered as ‘ayb’ (shameful). This is a story of one of the most stigmatised women miners in this village. Nadirah’s husband moved to Russia soon after they got married. He took a second wife there and stopped sending remittances, leaving both Nadirah and his daughter back in the village. To make a living, Nadirah started extracting coal and selling it on an informal market. Everyone in the village says that Nadirah is harsh’, ‘bossy’ and has a ‘bad temper’. ‘Mining is not women’s work’. Based on a collaborative feminist art-research project between the animation artist, Kate Jessop, and the geographer and ethnographer, NegarElodie Behzadi, this film makes visible otherwise invisibilised stories of shame. The animated ethnographic portrait raises awareness of issues around gender, work and exclusion, women’s restricted access to natural resources, and their stigmatisation in a desolate extractive landscape.
V majhni vasici Kante, ki leži 2000 metrov visoko v gorovju Fann v Tadžikistanu, se delo devetnajstih rudark, ki vsak dan rudarijo v nelegalnih premogovnikih, smatra za "ayb" (sramotno). Film, ki temelji na skupnem feminističnem umetniško-raziskovalnem projektu umetnice animacije ter geografinje in etnografinje, prikazuje sicer nevidne zgodbe o sramu.
Technique: Mixed media approach: stop motion, and 2D animation
Recommended for audiences under 14 years old: no
Script: Negar Elodie Behzadi
Animation: Kate Jessop Sound: Nicholas O'Brien
Production: The VEM: Visual and Embodied Methodologies Network, King's College London (Jelke Boesten)
Kate Jessop & Negar Elodie Behzadi
Kate Jessop is a multi award-winning animation filmmaker whose work spans across narrative shorts, artists' film and comedy. She represented the UK in the Best of Women in Film&TV, was a Virgin Media Shorts Finalist & a Berlinale Talents 2019 participant both as director & with her comedy series Tales From Pussy Willow in the Project Lab, which has subsequently been picked up for production by Hipster Films. She has exhibited extensively internationally, undertaking artist residencies in Berlin, Istanbul and Reykjavik. She is a Senior Lecturer in Animation & has taught in China. Her paper on Animation as Activism has been presented at Goldsmiths College & Queering Animation the first ever conference on Queer Animation. Negar Elodie Behzadi is a French/Iranian lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Bristol, UK (Dphil University of Oxford/ MA King's College London). In her research, Negar brings the insights of a feminist geographer, the sensibilities of an ethnographer and her passion for visual and art-based methodologies to explore questions of resource struggles, exclusion, migration and labour with marginalized communities in Central Asia. Negar is also co-directing an ethnographic video- documentary on resource extractive violence, Komor (Coal), and is the co-creator of the VEM (Visual, Embodied methodologies network launched at King’s College London). Nadirah: Coal woman draws on Negar’s ethnographic research in the village of Kante, Tajikistan. http://katejessop.co.uk/
