MASTERCLASS SCREENING + DISCUSSION
THURSDAY / FEBRUARY 20 / 5 PM @ DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY, 25 WAVERLY PLACE, KRISER THEATER
HEARTBOUND (2018, 90 mins, Dirs: Janus Metz and Sine Plambech)
This ethnographic film follows a network of Thai/Danish marriages over a decade, exploring the intimate effects of globalization. Film details, below. Post-screening discussion: Danish filmmaker/anthropologist SINE PLAMBECH (Visiting Fellow, Yale University).
CO-SPONSOR: DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY
HEARTBOUND
A multiple award-winning film on migration, women, sex work and the meaning of love and family.
Sommai, a former sex worker from Pattaya, lives in a windswept village in Northern Denmark. 25 years ago, she married Niels, and ever since, she has helped women from her village in Thailand marry Western men. Now, it is her niece Kae’s turn.
Sommai and Niels put a personal ad in the newspaper, and soon a suitor comes forward. In the meantime, in Thailand, another young woman, Saeng, tries to find a man, but Sommai cannot help her, and instead, she has to go to Pattaya to provide for her son by working in the sex bars.
Ten years later, we meet all of them again and see what consequences their choices in life have had for themselves and their children.
‘Heartbound’ is an epic family chronicle and a migration story, shot in two small communities in two different parts of the world, bound together by a network of Thai women and their Western husbands. Intimately and attentively, destinies, dreams and needs are woven together in an existential life journey.
HEARTBOUND had it’s World Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and is awarded the following prizes:
Winner of the Golden Eye Award for Best International Documentary at the 2018 Zürich Film Festival
Winner of the Award for Best Feature at the 2018 American Anthropological Associations Film and Media Festival
Winner of the Richard Werbner Award for Visual Ethnography at the 2019 Royal Anthropological Institute Film Festival
Winner of The Human Rights Award at the 2019 Dublin International Film Festival
Winner of Jury Award for Best International Documentary at Docville International Documentary Film Festival 2019