Theo Panagopoulos: On grief, dementia and film as a ritual-making

Datum
20. Juni 2024 

Webi­nar Series “Images, Age­ing and Care”

Webi­nar with Theo Panagopou­los on grief, demen­tia and film as a ritual-making. 

Thurs­day 20th June, 2024
17:00–18:30, BST, 18:00–19:30 CEST, 11:00–12:30 EST

To par­tic­i­pate please click on this link on the event date:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85314351265?pwd=2YP4Uklfy2dFYhv7nMWT6MQG8IwNij.1
Meet­ing ID: 853 1435 1265
Pass­code: 094701

More on the event below:

The Images of Care Col­lec­tive, AAGE, AgeNet and VANEASA are delight­ed to invite you to the sixth webi­nar of the series “Images, Age­ing and Care”. Our guest will be Theo Panagopou­los (Uni­ver­si­ty of the West of Scot­land), screen­ing and dis­cussing his recent film “The Place between Was & Will Be”. Bar­bara Pieta (Max Planck Insti­tute for Social Anthropology/Images of Care Col­lec­tive) will host and mod­er­ate the event. Join us on 20th June (Thurs­day), 17:00–18:30, BST, 18:00–19:30 CEST, 11:00–12:30 EST. To see the trail­er and get the zoom link, click here.

ABOUT THE TALK
In the short doc­u­men­tary film “The Place between Was & Will Be”, film­mak­er Theo Panagopou­los con­ducts a rit­u­al of antic­i­pa­to­ry grief in his Greek grand­par­ents’ aban­doned sum­mer house, after his grand­fa­ther is diag­nosed with demen­tia. By using the anthro­po­log­i­cal con­cept of lim­i­nal­i­ty to explore the house’s past, present and uncer­tain future, the film aims to slow down the moment of a big change and open a dis­course his fam­i­ly avoids to have. By using “The Place between Was & Will Be” as a case study, Theo Panagopou­los will dis­cuss how he uses the act of film­mak­ing as an inter­ven­tion of care where the tools of film become trans­par­ent with space and time becom­ing essen­tial in allow­ing truth to emerge organ­i­cal­ly through the process. He will dis­cuss how the form of film as rit­u­al-mak­ing allowed to engage with the top­ic of demen­tia through a dif­fer­ent cre­ative and con­cep­tu­al avenue by using the emp­ty house as a phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of the lim­i­nal space through which dif­fi­cult emo­tions can be addressed. Last­ly, he will explore what he learned through the process of mak­ing this inti­mate film and how he uses the act of film as inter­ven­tion in his fol­low­ing film and research work.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Theo Panagopou­los is a Greek-Lebanese-Pales­tin­ian film­mak­er, film pro­gram­mer and PhD researcher based in Scot­land. His cre­ative and aca­d­e­m­ic work explore themes of col­lec­tive mem­o­ry, dis­place­ment, frag­ment­ed iden­ti­ties and lan­guage. His films have been com­mis­sioned by Screen Scot­land, British Film Insti­tute Net­work and Scot­tish Doc­u­men­tary Insti­tute and have screened in many fes­ti­vals inter­na­tion­al­ly win­ning sev­er­al awards. He is cur­rent­ly an Asso­ciate lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West of Scot­land where he is doing his PhD research on using per­for­mance as a decolo­nial coun­ternar­ra­tive to colo­nial film archives.

ABOUT THE WEBINAR SERIES “Images, Age­ing and Care”
This webi­nar series “Images, Age­ing and Care” is spon­sored by the Images of Care Col­lec­tive, Asso­ci­a­tion for Anthro­pol­o­gy, Geron­tol­ogy and the Life Course (AAGE), , EASA’s Age and Gen­er­a­tions Net­work (AgeNet) and the Net­work for Visu­al Anthro­pol­o­gy of the Euro­pean Asso­ci­a­tion of Social Anthro­pol­o­gists (VANEASA). The series is free and open to all. It gath­ers anthro­pol­o­gists and image-mak­ers inter­est­ed in explor­ing the onto­log­i­cal and epis­te­mo­log­i­cal con­nec­tions between images, aging and care, treat­ing the rela­tion­ship and these phe­nom­e­na as requir­ing and invit­ing inter­ro­ga­tion. Check up our cur­rent line-up here.