Program 5: Waiting for Happiness (Heremanoko) April 4, 2011 6PM UMBC, Lecture Hall 3 Screening presented in conjunction with the exhibition, Where Do We Migrate To? About Waiting for Happiness (Heremanoko) Abderrahmane Sissako 2002, DVD, 90 minutes, Mauritania/Mali Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako described his film as “a portrait of people in departure, who have to a certain extent already left, without having actually yet moved.” Engaging with the transitory state inherent to trajectories of exile, the narrative of the film centers on Abdallah, a young man who awaits his departure to Europe in Nouadhibou, on the Coast of Mauritania. Beyond the central character, the port city itself comes to embody a state of suspension, as existential and geographical in-betweenness is invoked through spare dialogue and striking cinematography. About Where Do We Migrate To? This film program, curated by Sonja Simonyi and presented in partnership with the Film and Media Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University, presents a series of audiovisual materials, feature length fiction films, documentaries, as well as experimental videos. The selected films demonstrate the diverging ways in which networks of migration, experiences of displacement, and questions of belonging and rootlessness have been addressed by artist and filmmakers in recent years. While a selection of films engage with migratory practices as central to our understanding of the present-day self in increasingly globalized and multicultural settings, other works investigate the complex historical processes that frame these contemporary conditions. The program thus provides a rich sampling of ways in which the ongoing circulation of people across regions, nations and continents, is addressed and questioned from multiple political, social, cultural and historical perspectives in film and video art.
