Diana Szanto

DIANA E. SZANTO, University of Corvinus, Budapest, Hungary, was awarded a Fejos Fellowship in Ethnographic Filmmaking to aid filmmaking on “Walpole Street.” With the help of the Wenner-Gren Fejos ethnographic film grant, our team realized a 75-minute documentary with the title ‘Manish.’ The film talks about the successes and failures of the post-conflict democracy building in Sierra Leone, from the point of view of homeless disabled communities. The film’s hero is a polio-disabled boy struggling to remake his life shattered by the war. As a child, he ran away from his family to try his chance in the capital, where he survived — like many others — on begging. He joins a squat where he finds new friends and starts to invest hope in a musical career. His spectacular transformation from a street child into a young star is but superficial. He carries traumatizing memories and a deadly disease. The forces that put him in the war’s way and pushed him to the street come for him again. The film opens a reflection on the possibility and the value of hope on the ruins of a failing global capitalist system. The anthropologist, who tells the story, remains in the background but assumes a subjective position as the narrator. The anthropological intentions also transpire from the film’s webpage. Here short scenes are matched with pedagogical texts inviting users to further discussions. Link to the film: https://vimeo.com/473045442/38b4fe0440 Pass world : MANISH 2021 Link to the trailer: https://vimeo.com/429175685/bafd13c3ff web page: https://manish-movie.org