TO PICK A FLOWER

Shireen Seno
Philippines, 2021
17 min

Taking images of plants and trees as starting points, this video essay presents archival photographs from the American Colonial Era in the Philippines (1898–1946), exploring the relationship between humans, nature and their entanglements with empires.

A soft spoken tale of colonial power and of the disturbances it enforces within the dominated territories. Nature was often described in history as a vast, inexhaustible resource. In the wake of the industrial revolution and colonialism, its exploitation has since increased immensely and it was turned into private property. To Pick a Flower speaks of the unjust balance of power that governs the colonizer-colonized dynamics; dominating nature as opposed to being part of it, the irreversible ceding of environment for capital, and the uncomfortable realisation that while people on both sides can take the roles of preservers and perpetrators at different times, the power balance remains untipped. (Emil Vasilache)

Date and Location

30th of September, 18:30, Cinema Elvire Popesco

Tickets

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Shireen Seno

Shireen Seno is an artist and filmmaker whose work addresses memory, history, and image-making, often in relation to the idea of home. A recipient of the 2018 Thirteen Artists Award from the Cultural Center of the Philippines, she is known for her films which have won awards at Rotterdam, Punto de Vista, Shanghai, Olhar de Cinema, Vladivostok, Jogja-Netpac, and Lima and have been screened at New Directors/New Films, Yebisu International Festival of Art & Alternative Visions, Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, Tate Modern, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Portikus, NTU Center for Contemporary Art Singapore, Taipei National Center for Photography and Images, Museum of the Moving Image, among others.

  • Technical sheet
  • PRODUCERS: Shireen Seno, John Torres
  • SCRIPT / EDITOR / SOUND: Shireen Seno

Lost and Found

All films →

TO PICK A FLOWER

Shireen Seno | Duration 17 min

Taking images of plants and trees as starting points, this video essay presents archival photographs from the American Colonial Era in the Philippines (1898–1946), exploring the relationship between humans, nature and their entanglements with empires.

SOUM

Alice Brygo | Duration 31 min

While occupying a former bank and waiting to be able to legally assert their domicile, three squatters build their own memories in an attempt to reconcile their non-Western heritage with a present of assimilation.

NOTES FROM THE PERIPHERY

Tulapop Saenjaroen | Duration 14 min

Shot in the peripheral areas of the Laem Chabang port, Notes from the Periphery interrogates the notion of territoriality, globalized networks, and ownership through fragmented relations of the affected sites and communities nearby, shipping containers that become a policing tool, and barnacles.

MOUNE Ô

Maxime Jean-Baptiste | Duration 16 min

Presenting the festive events which accompanied the screening of a film where the director’s father played a role, the images in Moune Ô reveal the remnants of the colonial inheritance within a Western collective unconscious, always marking the other through stereotypes.

GOLDEN JUBILEE

Suneil Sanzgiri | Duration 19 min

Beginning with scenes of the filmmaker’s father navigating a virtual 3D rendering of their ancestral house in Goa, India, Golden Jubilee reconsiders ideas of freedom, loss and recovery in the wake of colonial and neo-colonial theft.

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