Stones Have Laws (film still), 2018

Stones Have Laws

The Film Club

7.2 2020

Stockholm

See ”Stones Have Laws (Dee Sitonu a Weti)” by Lonnie van Brummelen, Siebren de Haan and Tolin Erwin Alexander. The film is an immersive initiation into the life of a Maroon community in the former Dutch colony of Suriname. Combining stories of African ancestral traditions and escaped slavery with enacted contemporary rituals, the film explores how the community’s powerful ties to the land have become endangered as industries threaten to devastate the region through deforestation and mining.

Co-directors Lonnie van Brummelen, Siebren de Haan and Tolin Erwin Alexander closely involved the community in the development of the project, which was written using an experimental process of collective scripting. The result is a unique cinematic form that bridges filmmaking, poetry and theatre.

The Directors

Lonnie van Brummelen and Siebren de Haan work together as collaborating artists since 2002, producing film installations, sculpture and collages that explore cultural and geopolitical landscapes such as Europe’s borders (”Grossraum”, 2005), sites of resource production and global trade (”Monument of Sugar – how to use artistic means to elude trade barriers”, 2007; ”Episode of the Sea”, 2014, ”Stones Have Laws”, 2018), and the (non) sites of cultural heritage (”Monument to Another Man’s Fatherland”, 2008, ”View from the Acropolis”, 2012 and ”subi dura a rudibus”, 2010). Most of our projects involve extensive fieldwork and long-term collaborations. As part of our artistic practice, we express formal and informal research trajectories and the contingency of fieldwork in textual supplements.

Tolin Erwin Alexander is a Surinamese writer, director, actor and dancer specializing in cross-cultural theatre and community projects. He regularly collaborates with companies such as ArtLab (Maikel Austin), Kifoko, NAKS and the Sana Budaya group (Dwight Warsodikromo). Tolin Alexander joined the ”Stones Have Laws” project as researcher and co-director in 2015. He co-initiated the Culture Caravan that travelled to Ecuadorian and Colombian villages plagued by violent groups. Most recently he collaborated with the crew of the Dutch-flagged Ship of Fools to present a new play in Paramaribo. Tolin Erwin Alexander lives and works in Suriname.

About the Film Club

The Film Club features films and discussions on Friday evenings. The Moderna Bar will be open after the film screenings and offers a fine selection of wines, beers, cheeses and vegetarian wraps.

The Film Club resurrected in 2018 and presents films on the boundary between art and documentary. Often, the artist or director will take part in discussions after the screenings. The 2020 spring programme is compiled in collaboration with the Royal Institute of Art.

Film has had a prominent position at the Museum since the start. The Moderna Museet Film Club has existed since the Museum opened in 1958, showing everything from children’s matinees to the latest experimental art films.

Duriing the 1990’s and early 2000’s the museum presented international artists in the series Contemporary Film and Video. Other screening have often been held in connection with exhibitions at the museum or in collaboration with The Royal Academy of Art, Filmform, Cinemateket, Temp Documentary Film Festival, Cinemafrica, Stockholm’s Feminist Film Festival, among others.

Previous programme: The Film Club

The Film Club editorial team

Lena Essling, curator, Catrin Lundqvist, curator.

Contact

filmklubben@modernamuseet.se

Stones Have Laws (film still), 2018
Stones Have Laws (film still), 2018