Screening: Flight of the Condor / The Snow Kirk

Screening: Flight of the Condor / The Snow Kirk
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This is a past event

Ethnographic Film Series

The Flight of the Condor: A Letter, a Song, and the Story of Intangible Cultural Heritage, directed by Valdimar Hafstein and Áslaug Einarsdóttir

The Snow Kirk, directed by Emma Barclay, Lauren Hossack, Claire Needler, Ania Trepczyk, Eilidh Whiteford

Venue: MacRobert Building Room 051

Cost: Free admission (open to all)

Q&A: Screening followed by video link-up with director Valdimar Hafstein and Q&A with student directors

Abstract:

The Flight of the Condor traces the global circulation of the melody 'El Condor Pasa' from the Andes mountains to global metropoles; from Lima to Paris to New York, and back; from panpipes to piano and from symphony orchestras to the disco; from indigenous to popular music; and from world music back to national heritage. Some of the protagonists are: Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, Daniel Alomía Robles, Alan Lomax, Los Incas, the Cerro de Pasco Copper Company, the Victor Talking Machine Corporation, the Falangist Socialist Party of Bolivia, Chuck Berry, NASA, WIPO, and UNESCO.

The film shows how individual personalities and states can shape texts that become the foundation of global narratives, and how propositions made for a particular local reason become global instruments with entirely different effects in other corners of the world.

Unpacking the global/local dialectic, the film is a case study in paradox; it analyzes the prehistory of international heritage/copyright norms, the way that prehistory travels in oral and written circulation, and the enduring problems it points to in the implementation of these norms.

The Snow Kirk is a short MLitt student film that investigates the history of Old Aberdeen's 'hidden' Snow Kirk through historical documents, reconstruction, and interviews.

Speaker
Valdimar Hafstein
Hosted by
Elphinstone Institute
Venue
MacRobert Building, MR051
Contact

The Elphinstone Institute
MacRobert Building
King's College, University of Aberdeen
Aberdeen, AB24 5UA

Tel: 01224 272996
E-mail: elphinstone@abdn.ac.uk