Ruku Mojeju
(eng: Through Hands of Mine)
by Koštana Banović
The Netherlands, Serbia | 2022 | 72′
Producer: Rolf Orthel
Production: artTrace, The Netherlands
Co-production: Frakcija, Serbia
SYNOPSIS
Ruku Mojeju revolves around a sensory understanding of monastic life. In a convent on a small island between Montenegro and Albania, fifteen nuns – mostly young women, one of them blind – live their daily lives in a rhythm of work and prayer, and the endlessly undulating movements of nature. Over a period of nine years, the documentary developed as a result of the filmmaker’s intense involvement in this small community. Rather than questioning the morality of the institution of religion, Ruku Mojeju explores religious material practices and sensorial experiences as a choreography in and of itself. In the attempt to understand religion through lived practices, the film hones in on taste, smell, sound, colour, movement and touch. And therefore, the body, or more precisely, the affectivity of the body becomes the subject of the film. The search for an understanding of faith from the outside, leads to the question of how people’s religious convictions shape inside them. This, in turn, leads to wondering about form as the carrier of faith.
SCREENINGS
Beldocs – International Documentary Film Festival Belgrade 2022
FIFEQ-Montreal, International Ethnological Festival 2023
Nancy International Film Festival 2023
German International Ethnographic Film Festival Göttingen 2024
FILMOGRAPHY
– Reading Museology, 12:45 min, 2017, Netherlands
– Women in Uniform (series Workers at the Factory), 8 min, 2017, Brazil, Netherlands
– Lingering Minel (series Workers at the Factory), 11 min, 2017, Netherlands
– Among Houses and the Cosmos, 71 min, 2017, Netherlands
– May I Enter, 57 min, 2010, Netherlands
– Ploha, 48 min, 2007, Netherlands
– Sey, the Economy of Love, 35 min, 2006, Netherlands
– NaTragu, 16 min, 2001, Netherlands
– Dream Hunters, 15 min, 2000, Netherlands
BIOGRAPHY
Koštana Banović is a multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker. She was born in Sarajevo, in former Yugoslavia and is currently based in the Netherlands. She holds MA in Fine Arts from the HKU, University of Arts in Utrecht, Netherlands. The ritual is a recurring element in her work: as a choreography, as a reflection of history, and as an action that activates objects, materials and aesthetics, and blurs boundaries. Her cinematic practice addresses the interaction between experimental and cinéma vérité documentary styles, and includes a reflexivity belonging to the category of essay-film. Her films have earned her multiple awards and were screened at international film festivals, such as the IFFR in Rotterdam and Ji.hlava IDFF in Jihlava. She has exhibited across multiple international exhibition platforms, cultural-exchange residencies, and performed long-lasting artistic research in Brazil and the countries of former Yugoslavia. Currently artistic director of KAMEN Artist Residency in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the director of the Eastern Neighbours Film Festival in The Hague in The Netherlands.