Lisa Konno & Sarah Blok
The Netherlands
Lisa Konno (Fashion Design) and Sarah Blok (Director) first made NOBU together, then BABA. They were surprised about how social engagement in art was usually linked with realism and melancholy. In their short fashion documentaries they want to switch the focus from what is told to how it is told, because they believe that's the place where art and film can distinguish itself from journalism. Their films are stylized portaits of fathers and daughters that shine a different light on topics such as migration, cultural identity and family.
Lisa Konno graduated from the Fashion Design department of ArtEZ in 2014 and has worked on various collections and projects ever since. Her work is uplifting and colourful and simultaniously carries outspoken statements about the fashion industry. In 2018 she won a Dutch Design Award for her work.
Sarah Blok graduated as a theatre writer from HKU in 2015 and has made several theatre plays since. Her work is about people living in today’s world and therefore considers the words that form the background of our lives: impact, sustainability, self-development, authenticity and ambition. She questions these concepts in stylised stories that comfort and alienate at the same time.
Thank you to FASHIONCLASH Festival
‘BABA’
Ceylan Utlu moved from Turkey to The Netherlands forty years ago to provide his left-wing ideology with western knowledge. After having had the education he wanted, he would go back to make himself useful to his own country. His half-Turkish, half-Dutch daughter wonders why things didn’t go the way her dad planned it and asks him about immigration, integration, relationships, and loneliness. As both father and daughter consciously do not talk about everything, gaps arise in the portrait. These gaps are filled with stylised scenes that tell a story by themselves by using fashion inspired by his life. The combination of designed elements and documentary makes BABA a 14-minute surrealistic portrait with a light-hearted tone that fits the main character.
BABA is a follow up to Sarah Blok and Lisa Konno's NOBU (2018), a study both of Konno's Japanese father and of migration. See NOBU here.