People of Flour, Salt, and Water (2019)
a film by Chto Delat (Olga Tsaplay Egorova, Nina Gasteva, Dmitry Vilensky, Nikolay Oleynikov)
produced by Free Home University, curated by Alessandra Pomarico and Nikolay Oleynikov, with the support of Musagetes (Canada) and Regione Puglia. shoot in Castiglione d’Otranto (Andrano), Puglia, Italy, 2019 director: Olga Tsaplya Egorova collective body: Nina Gasteva first camera: Mattia Epifani (MUUD Films) second camera: Dmitry Vilensky, Nikolay Oleynikov, Giacomo Goldoni sound: Elina Lebedze with: Rebaz Ahmed, Modou Ceesay, Augustine Emanuel, Giacomo Goldoni, Ebrima Kayeteh, Aglaya Oleynikova, Friday Okodogbe, Christian Peverieri, Emiliano Peverieri, Alessandra Pomarico, Luigi Schiavano, Donatella Serafino, Rita Tamiello and Asya Vilenskaya
People of Flour, Salt, and Water is the second film made by Chto Delat as part of their ongoing project of Slow Orientation in Zapatismo. The film was conceived as a learning process, providing at the same time a framework, a method, and a way to formally organize what was learned in the 2019 summer session of Free Home University, hosted in Castiglione d’Otranto (South of Italy). The process unfolded around the struggle of local farmer-activists, protecting and regenerating their land, producing forms of sharing and commoning; the struggle of the refugees, migrants, and displaced subjects; and the struggle of young artists and activists trying to make sense of it all and change the world. Zapatismo was the lens through which participants analyzed their own stories, conditions, and possibilities, providing the group with a set of tools and a praxis with which to resonate.
The film People of Flour, Salt, and Water (2019) by Chto Delat poetically respond to the consequences of neoliberalism, displacement, and exploitation on the lives of people, across different territories. Created during a summer session of Free Home University in a small Italian village where autonomous farmers and land defenders are regenerating their communities- the film follows a group of young asylum seekers, artists, activists, and change-makers who become co-authors and protagonists of the story. Chto Delat, revisiting the Brechtian didactic tradition of the learning plays and guiding the process through somatic exercises, storytelling, story-placing, and life in common- realizes a learning film in which the making of the work becomes a learning process in itself and a device for a plural knowledge sharing process.
