Snaps

Six international curators from the Norient community have researched contemporary music videos that re-imagine, parody, or deconstruct Orientalism. Here is the shortlist by curator and designer Basak Senova, who focuses on videos from Türkiye.

In this commentary, curator and designer Basak Senova discusses the background of Turkish rapper Ceza’s music video «Türk Marşı». The video mashes elements from past and present Turkish culture to challenge the circulation of clichéd images between the East and the West.

There are many kinds of activism around the world. As some films from the 9th Norient Musikfilm Festival 2019 show, this depends on the intentions of the persons concerned, and the politics of the places and spaces they inhabit.

To be recognized might be the most fundamental need of being human. Yet the means and methods for seeking it differ radically, especially among artists. As some of the movies at the 9^th NMFF 2019 have shown, recognition can become a matter of survival.

When Peter Guyer and Thomas Burkhalter were filming Contradict, they worked with female Ghanaian creatives to assemble a portrait of a generation tackling the post-colonial struggles, and how they see feminism after it gained an increasing global presence.

Since hip hop’s birth, samples of politicized words have resonated across genres, be it punk anti-establishment, jaunty new-wave experimentations, or EDM’s uplifting calls for unity. Lola Baraldi traces out music that gives political words a new meaning.

When making their film on the music scene in Ghana, Peter Guyer and Thomas Burkhalter discussed how to deal with the ethics of representation. Together with local artists, they decided to shoot a documentary that was not just about the scene, but created with it.

Since 2014, Hong Kong’s art and music industries have been baptized by a political awakening. Artists like Susi Law got elected into district councils. Law is not one for big speeches and her aural sensitivity could be beneficial to Hong Kong’s political crisis in 2020.