This year we are gathering together in a “backyard” format to view and share each other’s work from across the entire visual community. We invite you to submit your photography, videography, and other visual mediums to present on the evening of Saturday, September 24th at Barboursville Vineyards in Virginia.
Award-winning filmmaker and photographer, Andy Mann, combines his passions for storytelling and songwriting into this experimental, musical adventure across the planet’s seven continents.
Supported by his dazzling photography and moving images, Andy’s journey from mountain climbing to marine conservation involves remarkable detours and misadventures, crocodiles and sharks, icebergs and polar bears.
Andy draws on folk songwriting traditions, weaving in a postmodern twist under his delightfully warped, witty sense of storytelling, all in pursuit of his ultimate goal: shedding light on earth’s incredible oceans and advocating for their protection.
The Sacred Space Oddity is an elegiac meditation on the interaction of the physical and psychological space encompassed in the loaded, often effacing, phrase ‘Holy Land’. Successfully documenting life in Israel and Palestine requires a powerful capacity for empathy, and an ability to accept the existence of two contradictory and often hostile realities at once. The Sacred Space Oddity takes a perspective closer to the ground, exploring the confidential, intimate urges, hopes, fears, and choices that weave the living tapestry on which the conflict is played out.
The medley of characters featured are metaphorical co-authors of this project; their understandings of the land embedded within the imagery in a participatory excavation of their experience and socio-political imaginaries. Sacred Space oddity engages a diverse cast of characters, modulating between realist and surrealist aesthetics deployed against the backdrop of everyday occurrences in the lives of Palestinians and Israelis. The work offers a multitude of ways to learn and unlearn the material and psychic space that defines the so-called ‘Holy Land’.
Tanya seeks to challenge the simplifying mythologies that emerge in regions of conflict, both about “the other side” and which populations tell themselves about who they are and who they seek to be.
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info@lalobafestival.com
PO Box 892
Charlottesville, Virginia
22902
La Loba Festival is fiscally sponsored by the Center for Independent Documentary, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization.
Andy Mann is an Emmy-nominated Director, 3 time Telly-Award Winner, National Geographic Photographer & marine conservationist whose imagery is helping tell the story of our rapidly changing planet.
In 2013 his work alongside Pristine Seas was awarded the Crystal Compass Award from the Royal Geographic Society for the storytelling that led to the designation of the world largest Arctic National Park in Franz Josef Land, Russia. In 2015 Andy directed the first Oceano Azul Foundation expedition to Azores leading to the declaration of 150,000 square kilometers of new Marine Protected Areas in the Azorean Sea. In 2017 he co-directed the award-winning National Geographic / Sea Legacy expedition to Antarctica, presenting the final work at the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting in Buenos Aires, Chile. Often best known for his shark work, Andy has worked tirelessly with the critically endangered oceanic whitetip shark, creating Google Expedition’s first shark-tagging 360 VR classroom lesson plan and is working closely with NOAA on the recovery plan for the species. In 2019 he began his most ambitious project yet, the protection of Timor Leste’s pristine coral reefs.
Andy became a founding member of the Sea Legacy Collective in 2016 and Senior Fellow in 2019. Andy is also a public speaker, touring nationwide with National Geographic Live! and continues to work with students and classrooms around the world to inspire the next generation of ocean ambassadors.
Having worked on all 7 continents, Andy’s imagery is remarkably memorable, reminding us how the emotion of an image can touch our spirit.
Andy is also the co-founder and director at 3 Strings Productions, the commercial and documentary film studio in Boulder, CO and works with clients such as Red Bull, Toyota, The North Face, National Geographic and more. He also a founding member of the Sea Legacy Collective and senior fellow with Paul Nicklen and Cristina Mittermeier.
Born in Jordan and raised between Texas and the Middle East, Tanya Habjouqa has earned a reputation for documentary that brings politics and creative vision into the same frame. With a focus on gender, identity, and socio-political issues in the Middle East, there is always a layer of gravitas and an intuitive sense of metaphor beneath her work. Tanya is an artist, educator, and member of NOOR Images.
Habjouqa takes on a series-based approach, immersed in research and interlaying journalistic, academic, conceptual and documentary practices. In recent years, her projects have been commended by the likes of World Press Photo, TIME, and the Smithsonian. She is hired by organizations such as Amnesty International to make multi-country media campaigns. She is a mentor for the “Arab Photography Documentary Program” and teaches workshops internationally. Tanya is trained in journalism and anthropology with a Masters in Global Media and emphasis on Middle East Politics from the University of London SOAS.
If you are interested in participating in one of the panels, please let us know.
