Public Scholarship & Workshops
This is not America, Ma’am is a multi-sited multimedia archive curated around mundane objects and their profound absences; around enduring heritage and the phantom limbs of lost ancestors; around a cacophony of state violences and inter-generational traumas; and around contemporary and historical anti-Roma, anti-LGBT, anti-Semitic, misogynistic, Islamophobic, and xenophobic Romanian discourse. A collection of multimedia punctuations, ruptures, and balms in the temporal and material fabric of a displaced diasporic Romanian, This is not America, Ma’am is the musique concrète of a broken heart, whose found objects are the crackling of a hundred year old radio, a menacing wind rustling through the leaves of an apple orchard abandoned for half century, family poems, great grandpa Nicolae’s letters written from the trenches of both World Wars, personal encounters with abusive state figures, Uber drivers opinionated about politics and life, quotes from our family’s “Communist files,” and soundbites from conversations with close friends—Romanian and transnational artists and activists who ‘accompany’ me on my journey “back home.” The archive serves the double function of an Offsite project and a live, ever-growing, mood board for Anatomically, the heart is always incorrect, a multimedia play and film that uses autoethnography, poetry, animation, and digital storytelling to explore Eastern-European embodiment, politics, and heritage.
Opening Keynote of the 17th edition of ethnocineca - International Documentary Film Festival by Mariangela Mihai (Western Washington University): "A methodology of love: on feminist, queer and ethnofiction filmmaking."
Is there a place for handcrafted films in 21st Century anthropology?
This session focuses on "handcrafted anthropological films"— films with negligible budgets that engage questions within anthropology. Discussants will explore the challenges of sustaining a filmmaking practice amidst demands of mainstream academia and conventional media models. March 10, 2023
The Certainty of Probabilities
Virtual discussion with director Raluca Durbacă of the documentary The Certainty of Probabilities. Moderated by Mariangela Mihai. Nov 18, 2022
Oct 11, 2022, The Polytechnic University of Bucharest Library
Screening of Alina Șerban’s “Bilet de iertare”/”Letter of Forgiveness”, a short film exploring the enslavment of Roma people in Romania.
Discussants: Dir. Alina Serban, Furtuna Adrian , and Mariangela Mihai
Romanian Film Festival in Seattle, 8th edition, Nov 2021
Q&A with director Eugen Jebeleanu about his debut film "Poppy Field" (2020), one of the rare Romanian LGBTQ+ films
Moderator: Mariangela Mihai
About the film: Jebeleanu's film is inspired by a real incident that happened a few years ago at the Peasant Museum Cinema, presenting a day in the life of Cristi (Conrad Mericoffer), a young gendarme from Bucharest. During a short visit from Hadi (Radouan Leflahi), his long-distance boyfriend, Cristi and his colleagues are called to intervene at a movie theater where a group of ultra-nationalist, homophobic protesters has sabotaged the screening of an LGBT film. In the midst of the scene, an old affair with another man resurfaces, threatening his professional and personal stability. About the Director: Eugen Jebeleanu is a Romanian theatre and film director. For more than ten years, his projects, both in theatre and cinema, have been centered around political and social subjects and his artistic endeavor is focused on giving voice to anonymous individuals, to those who don’t adhere to the dominant culture and revolt against systems which censor freedom of expression. He has worked with prestigious theatres around the world, like the National Theatre in Stuttgart, where he directed Katzelmacher, by R.W. Fassbinder and Roosevelt Square, by Dea Loher; or the Opera de Lyon, where he is preparing a contemporary opera project, I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky, by John Adams. His creations have been programmed in theatre festivals in Romania, Poland, Denmark, Germany, Republic of Moldova and France.
Visions for Liberation: Third Cinema Revisited, April 14-16, 2021
Anti-Roma Racism On and Off Screen, with Dir. Alina Serban, Lisa Smith, and Luiza Medeleanu
Moderator: Mariangela Mihai
From romantic rebels and nomads, to fetishized femme fatales, to victims of state and communal violence, we will look at the how limited visual representation of the Roma community begets inescapable stereotypes that further its marginalisation. Luiza Medeleanu will help us contextualise the Roma image in cinematography and cultural media and the political stakes that shape it. Alina Serban and Lisa Smith will screen samples from their films and will discuss their positionalities as Roma women filmmakers; the stories they are trying to tell and why; and how anti-Roma racism and institutional marginalisation affect their lived experiences, activism, and filmmaking.
Organized by Elena Guzman, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Visual Studies at Haverford, along with Ethnocine Collective: Emily Hong, Miasarah Lai, Laura Menchaca Ruiz, Mariangela Mihai. Sponsored by the Office of the Provost, the John B. Hurford ‘60 Center for the Arts and Humanities at Haverford College, and Ethnocine Collective.
haverford.edu/center-arts-and-humanities/news/visions-for-liberation
(In)congruences
A meditation on ethnography in four senses, this visual anthology gestures toward the potential and the limits of our touching, hearing, scenting, and seeing as scholar-artists, as well as the ways in which we are simultaneously touched, heard, scented, and seen.
AAA 2019: Vancouver, CA
BFMF Pop-up Installation
This multi-day installation appeared in the 3rd season of BFMF podcast featured on Full Service Radio in Washington DC, and streamed on various outlets (Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts).
AAA 2019: Vancouver, CA
#DecolonizeDocs: A Feminist Filmmaking Works-in-progress Workshop
As anthropologists and filmmakers, how do we work against the colonial residue of conventional documentary and ethnographic filmmaking? What does it mean to decolonize ethnographic and documentary film? What are the tools we can use to work towards feminist and decolonial approaches to collaboration? Anyone with experience (or an interest) in visual anthropology and documentary filmmaking is welcome.
Mizoram University (India)
Ethnofictions: Storytelling in Anthropological Filmmaking
Two-days hands-on workshop in which participants will learn how to use collaborative ethnoficion filmmaking methods to tell stories that can otherwise not be told.
Western University of Ontario: March 2019
AAA 2018: San Jose, CA
Visualizing Fieldwork: How to make films with your cellphones Workshop
Make the most of your smartphone in the field by collecting visual anecdotes. This workshop teaches participants practical skills to capture and create short compelling pieces of audio-visual media using their smartphones. Participants will learn the basic building blocks for documentary storytelling, be introduced to different styles of ethnographic filmmaking, technical video and audio how-to’s on the smartphone for direct applications in the field.
AAA 2018: San Jose, Ca
Bad Feminists Making Films, Ethnocine, Rhiza & Re-Present Media
In this live event, we consider how feminist filmmakers engage in intersectional analyses that include race, class, sexuality, nationality, gender, and/or religion at all stages of the filmmaking process. We explore how feminist praxis critiques the power structures that hold normative categories in place by expanding tired narratives featured in mainstream media, where stories of, for and by marginalized communities rarely have the opportunity to exist. Featured filmmakers will speak to their work at multiple stages of their film projects, whether they work behind the scenes, in front of the camera, or in the editing room.
International Burma Studies Conference: Bangkok, Aug 2018
Glimmers of Subjectivity: Karen Women and the Refugee Experience
Screening and discussion of the short film NOBEL NOK DAH, which features the powerful stories of three Karen refugee women from Myanmar (Burma) who resettle to Central New York. Film themes include forced migration and human rights, the refugee experience (camps and resettlement), gender, cultural shift and identity, storytelling & oral history, and coping & resilience. The event will introduce participants to the film discussion guide, a robust resource that features workshop outlines and discussion questions for multiple audiences as well as multimedia stories to accompany the short film.
Cornell Southeast Asia Program: April 2018
Nobel Nok Dah Film Discussion Guide: Centering Women’s Stories in Experiences of Refugee Resettlement
We welcome high school teachers, college professors, refugee service providers, and others interested in using film to spark conversations about the refugee experience, to join us for a film screening and discussion guide launch. The screening will be followed by a workshop for those interested in using the film to spark conversations in their classrooms and communities about themes of the film such as the refugee experience, immigration & resettlement, gender roles, culture and identity, coping & resilience.
Mizoram University (India): March 2017
Visual Anthropology Lab: Sensory Ethnography & the Politics of Collaboration
This hands-on workshop introduces the core debates in visual anthropology, including discussions on sensory ethnography and the politics of collaboration. Participants will take part in hands-on workshop sessions, in preparation for the production of short ethnographic films. Through lectures, film screenings, and five days of filmmaking, participants will gain an overall understanding of sensory ethnography approaches to filmmaking and best practices in collaboration.