Visual Wednesday: Life is Sacred

This semester's first Visual Wednesday will feature the Danish award winning film director Andreas Dalsgaard who will present and discuss his film Life is Sacred (Danish Title: Colombias Kamp for fred) - director's cut 103 minutes.

For five years Andreas Dalsgaard traveled forth and back together with his closest collaborators between Bogoto, Colombia's capital and Denmark in order to follow a politician who hasn't his equal on earth. The locals call him "loco", but it is well meant. His name is Antanas Mockus, and he does everything that is in his power to reverse the vicious circle, which is a fact of everyday life in Colombia, with an imaginative and positive election campaign. As mayor of Bogotá, and dressed in a Superman costume and with an indomitable trust in the good of his fellow citizens, he overcame both towering crime rates, unruly students and people's bad traffic habits. But his idealism is both his strength and his weakness in a corrupt political system, where his opponent plays a dirty game, and where the people have lost faith in being able to make a difference. Mockus is helped by the 22-year-old activist Katherine, who herself has lost her father in the bitter conflict. Now this has to end. But can good ideas and an idealistic drive alone change an entire political culture, where violence is an institutionalised part of everyday life? An inspiring man, and an inspiring story, whose points are relevant far beyond Colombia's borders, posing questions about how political change can be made in general. His ideas have for example inspired Uffe Elbæk and Alternativet. 

We hope that you are ready for an exciting afternoon full of entertainment, filmic knowledge and exciting debates about democracy and political change.

"Visual Wednesday" is a series of film screenings, presentations, and discussions organized by students from the Eye & Mind Laboratory for Visual Anthropology at Moesgaard, Aarhus University.