Movie night with EHL & KTH SforS: ONE TABLE TWO ELEPHANTS

The second movie is ONE TABLE TWO ELEPHANTS, an ethnographic film from Cape Town and its surroundings, where B-boys, biologists, bushmen and ghosts share the world of life, by Jacob von Heland and Henrik Ernstson. The documentary was made during Henrik’s and Jacob’s time at the EHL, with world premiere in 2018 at CPH:DOX, Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, and with Swedish premiere at EHL’s film festival Crosscuts. Since then, the film has been screened in various settings and has been used in teaching at universities in USA, Australia, UK, South Africa, and Sweden, as it opens up important questions about nature, urbanization, class, race and the living remains of colonialism. See full synopsis below.

The doors open at 17:00, and at 17:30 we start with a short introduction before we watch the film (84 min), followed by a discussion with Henrik Ernstson

All are welcome! Sign up here

ONE TABLE TWO ELEPHANTS (84 min)

A film about race, nature and ways of knowing in the postcolonial city.

This is a film about bushmen b-boys, a flower kingdom and the ghost of a princess. Entering the city through its plants and wetlands, the many-layered, painful and liberating history of the city emerges as we see how biologists, hip hoppers, and wetland activists each searches for ways to craft symbols of unity and cohesion. But this is a fraught and difficult task. Perhaps not even desirable. Plants, aliens, memories and ghosts keep troubling efforts of weaving stories about this place called Cape Town. Situated and grounded in lived experiences across a range of groups, this film follows different ways of knowing and tries to be a vehicle toward difficult yet urgently needed conversations about how race, nature, and the city are intertwined in our postcolonial world where history is ever present in subtle and direct ways. This cinematic ethnography brings texture to understand a city like Cape Town, while providing possibilities to translate what is happening “there” to conversations about any city and its surroundings. The film was created in a context of long-term urban research in Cape Town in collaboration between the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town and the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

Accolades — Nominated to Nordic Dox Award with World Premiere at CPH:DOX, Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, March 2018. — Nominated to Best Documentary Feature with African Premiere at Cape Town International Film Festival (CTIF&MF), October 2018 — Nominated as Best International Documentary at Tirana International Film Festival (TIFF), November 2018 — Official selection at InScience International Science Film Festival in Nijmegen in November 2018 — Official selection and Swedish premiere at CrossCuts Film Festival for the Environmental Humanities in Stockholm, November 2018.

Credits — Created by Jacob von Heland and Henrik Ernstson (direction, writing, research). Cinematography: Johan von Reybekiel. Sound: Jonathan Chiles. Editing: Jacob von Heland. Assistant Editing: Henrik Ernstson. Sound Design and Mix: Jakob Oldenburg. Production Coordination: Jessica Rattle and Nceba Mangesi. Color grade: Johan von Reybekiel. Original Music: Louise Becker. Graphic Design: Erik Hartin. Produced by Telltales Film, in collaboration with The Situated Ecologies Platform African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town and the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory in Stockholm. Funded by The Swedish Research Council Formas with support from the Marcus and Amalia Wallenberg Foundation. Runtime 84 minutes. Selected in Competition and World Premiere at CPH:DOX in 2018. — Trailer . Full length film (open access) — The film is being used in teaching at universities in USA, Australia, UK, South Africa, and Sweden, for materials for teaching visit our Situated Ecologies Platform here.

Filmmakers — Jacob von Heland and Henrik Ernstson are researchers and filmmakers who are born in Sweden but have worked scholarly and professionally in southern and eastern Africa for more many years. They share a mutual research focus on urban political ecology, knowledge politics, visual science- and-technology studies (STS) and the use of artistic practices, with a particular interest in urban and environmental politics.

Scholarly reference — Heland, Jacob von, and Henrik Ernstson. 2018. One Table Two Elephants (84 minutes, cinematic ethnography, Color, HD, Dolby 5:1). World Premiere in Competition at CPH:DOX 2018, March 20. Published by The Situated Ecologies Platform (CC-BY-NC). URL: bit.ly/1T2Ethefilm