What does it mean to be an island? What does it mean to live on one? Labocine’s April issue explores the notion of “island” and invites us to reflect on the many wonders that islands and island life present, from rich resources to diverse cultures and traditions which might be under threat in the wake of industrialization and globalization. From Greenland to Nauru to Ellis Island, the notion of island may evoke a plethora of memories, ideas and emotions. As different and far away as they may seem from one another, islands are defined by the very same boundary imposed by nature: water. Being an Island explores the land and water alike, and all forms of life that thrive on islands.
Curated by Ozge Calafato
Four days after being declared dead, a young girl miraculously find a way to communicate with her mother leading her to find a way save her. With the help of a mad scientist, she and her husband will embark a journey to Haïti.
In times past an anarchist community of pirates called Madagascar home. It was an island beyond the law and off the map, a place of rogues, booty and bounties. These were outlaws moored on a marooned ecosystem. Set adrift 88 million years ago, the island is a castaway in the Indian Ocean, inhabited
Has Iceland always been a treeless land? Can any forests grow on this island of glaciers and volcanos? The film responds to these questions by telling a story of the forestry in Iceland. It explains why considering the genetic aspects of seeds, cuttings and seedlings is key for resilient forests in
I made the trip on a cargo to the North-Coast of St-Laurent river and I stopped on Anticosti island. It has 200 inhabitants and 150000 deers. The island is famous for its shipwrecks. Who are the ones who come to live here today? What are they fleeing? What are they looking for? And I, what was I sea
India's Sunderbans islands, on the rim of the Bay of Bengal, are threatened by sea level rise caused by global warming. Scientists say the rising water is causing a variety of impacts, including greater erosion—and thus loss of land—and changes in salinity. Among the unexpected impacts o
Arecibo, the world's largest radio telescope, is located in Esperanza, Puerto Rico, which is also home to a critically endangered species of parrots. The telescope functions as an ear that is capable of capturing signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. The witty messages from the parrots remain unno
To pay for the cigarettes he kept putting on the tab at the local market, so that his father wouldn't find out, Hamdi goes into a desolate Turkish-Greek home in Büyükada to steal. A journal he finds at this home makes Hamdi question his conscience for stealing the happy memories of someone
Seagulls hover and dip on the rocky coastline of Gibraltar Point on Toronto Island. Tilting and multiple horizons camouflage the birds, splintering and gathering the lone gull to the flock.
After having made numerous scientific discoveries, the Belgian expedition boat in Antarctica approached Deception Island and got trapped in ice for close to thirteen months. During that enforced overwintering, the lack of light from the polar night was the source of diseases, depressions and even ca
The Ballad of Holland Island House is a short animation made with an innovative clay-painting technique in which a thin layer of oil-based modelling clay comes to vibrant life frame by frame. Animator Lynn Tomlinson tells the true story of the last house on a sinking island in the Chesapeake Bay. To
The Greek island of Syros is visited by a series of unexpected guests. Immutable forms, outside of time, aloof observants to our human condition.
In a summer of intention and wandering, an Unangam Tunuu elder reflects on landscape and fauna, language students play and teach invented games, and a portrait takes shape of a place through the dim and distant glimpse of a visitor on an island in the center of the Bering Sea.
An immigrant in New York tries to become a Scarlet Ibis (Eudocimus ruber) bird, so that she can travel back to the Caribbean for her child's birthday party.
Mbarouk Mussa Omar is from a small East African Island called Pemba. Nearly ten years ago he visited a tiny neighboring islet called Kokota and was shocked by what he saw. Kokota was teetering towards collapse, and Mbarouk knew climate change and deforestation were the culprits. He desperately wante
Dairiki, Kei and Miura got aboard a ship. They talk as they look at the sea and play all whole night. They arrive at an island the following day. They continue their conversation as they walk around the rocky mountains and fores on the island. They see a stone that resembles a human face, an inhabit
Octopus is an experimental, poetic and psychedelic journey about the passage from life to death. Completely shot with a GoPro camera in Bocas del Toro, Panama, Octopus tells the story of a mourning experience portrayed through the drowning of a being who in abandoning reality, leaves the earth and t
The film gives the audience a rare chance to explore the lives of the Negrito hunting-gathering tribe of this island now threatened with extinction. It is only the third film made on the tribe, and probably the only one ever broadcast. The indigenous tribes of the Andamans are said to be the purest
In 2018 the Solomon Islands, in the South Pacific, hosted the Melanesian Arts & Cultural Festival, celebrating the country's 40th anniversary of independence. On neighboring island states, the struggle for freedom continues, as West Papua resists Indonesian occupation and the residents of New Caledo
A poetic documentary about the lost film culture in small villages on Croatian islands, during the second half of the last century. Six witnesses of the time are remembering their favorite films and events related to their viewing and screening experiences, which marked their lives.
A creature from outer space comes to earth, landing next to an island that looks something like a petrified tortoise. Her name is Ainhoa, a nine-year-old girl who suffers from chronic asthma and who has taken on the personal challenge of spending a night alone on the island pretending she is an extr
A personal perspective on coming home after nearly a decade abroad and finding that something is off in the familiar paradise. A warning that profound change is coming. Change that will influence future generations. In 10 years everything changes...
Following a nuclear explosion that transforms the voice of all the inhabitants of an island, a Finnish journalist goes there in order to find a hermit with mysterious powers.
McKnelly MegalithCarving starting around 1100 A.D., the Moai of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) weigh up to 82 tons apiece. When Dutch explorers discovered this pacific island in 1722, they wondered at these megalithic figures, asking the inhabitants how their ancestors possibly moved the statues from quar
The Italian "refugee island" of Lampedusa is in the firm grip of winter tristesse. The Tourists have left, the remaining refugees fight to be taken to the mainland. As a fire destroys the worn down ferry, that connects the island to Italy, the mayor Giusi Nicolini and the local fishermen struggle fo
Filmmaker and photographer, Philippa Ndisi-Herrmann embark on a journey that takes her to the island of Lamu. Her intentions, to make a documentary about the effects on Lamu's community and the environment as it transforms from an obscure, predominantly Muslim Stone town to a huge Port town. A gigan
An animated portrait of conservation biologist Nick Holmes and his work preventing extinctions on islands. 80% of the world's extinctions have occurred on islands. In the 1990s, two surfer / biologists decided to do something about that. Today, their company Island Conservation employs dozens of peo
A hallucinatory journey into the Haitian carnival shot on 16mm. Created in collaboration with the director's students from the Ciné Institute in Jacmel, Haiti, and based on a poem by young Haitian poet Gabriel Jerry Wood.
In Indonesia, multinational corporations have drained millions of acres of swamps and converted them to industrial plantations of oil palm and acacia. Researchers are looking for alternative crops that can be grown in wet conditions, without draining. They're touting, among other possible candidates
Christmas Island; in the middle of the Indian Ocean, 50 million red crabs make their ancient annual voyage from the jungle to the oceans edge. While thousands of asylum seekers are detained indefinitely in a high security facility. Poh Lin, a trauma counsellor living on the Island of Hungry Ghosts,
A man catches hermit crabs which only live on a certain island in Japan. He releases them in his hotel room. Large numbers of hermit crabs are spread around and they move freely around the room; on the bed, on the desk, on the carpet, and sometimes they get into the refrigerator. Others drop from th
Ctenophora / Comb Jellies are the oceanic species that recently initiated a radical re-drawing of the Tree of Life - from the bottom up. This video was captured during a full moon upwelling at Hope Island, British Columbia - as raw material for installations that consider alternate evolutionary path
Mihal Şişko is one of the oldest and last Greeks on Kınalıada, one of the Princes' Islands in Istanbul. He began working as a sexton at the age of 10. He sees himself as 'the last leaf on the tree' of Istanbul's Greek Turk community. The church connects him with his roots, his past and his mother to
A man is drawn into the footsteps of François Mackandal, the historic Haitian slave leader. Following a man trapped in a curse which started centuries ago, this modern fable folds accounts of the past with the resilience of the present.
This short film from Colin Low presents the problems faced by the people of Fogo Island, Newfoundland and what keeps them committed to the land. Witness some of the magic of the island, as seen through the eyes of children, and understand why its inhabitants cling to its shores.
The film looks at the "global ecological crisis" from the perspective of the island of Martinique. In reflecting on ecology, the film not only raises issues concerning nature and damaged ecosystems, but, moreover, focuses on spaces of resistance to the crisis in which women and men acknowledge and a
.TV is a found footage essay film: Voicemails left by an anonymous caller from the future guide us to the remote islands of Tuvalu, a place the global media has described as "the first country to disappear due to rising sea levels". Surrounded by thousands of miles of open water, much of Tuvalu's re
Fumiya Island depicts a robotics research laboratory as a newly discovered island in an archipelago of robotic research labs constituting the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, University of Zurich. The indigenous creatures occupying Fumiya Island as its fauna are quadruped robots developed by rese
A restless daughter meets a spirit-fish who gives her pure water but as her family devours the delicious water, they begin to suspect more than the origin of its taste.
I began reading Virgil's Georgics, a 1 st Century epic agricultural poem, and knew immediately that I needed to create a visual equivalent about my own relationship to the place where I live, New York City. The film is culled from material I collected at Coney Island, the Lower East Side, Socrates S
A family gathers for a reunion in a house on an isolated island. They are waiting for the last person to join them, but as the evening arrives and he doesn't arrive, a strange anxiety overwhelms them.
From the river of doubt to the Mount Sinai the words blend with landscape. The map becomes poem, and the island, mysterious.
Featuring stunning footage from seven winters in the Arctic, People of a Feather takes you through time into the world of the Inuit on the Belcher Islands in Canada's Hudson Bay. Connecting past, present and future is a unique relationship with the eider duck. Eiderdown, the warmest feather in the w
On the island of Saipan, a young girl's mysterious dream about a haggan, or green sea turtle, leads her to investigate the sea turtles that live around her home. Join her adventure to find turtles, which leads to a wonderful birthday wish. Producers | Stephani Gordon, Laura Sams, Robert Sams Written
A curious girl documents the lives of a marginalized group of gazelles on the Saadiyaat Island Golf Club in Abu Dhabi, a city who names translates into "rich in gazelles" in Arabic.