A short film written and made in the island of Lesvos in the framework of the Encounters Summer School, promoted by the Faculty of Fine Arts of University of Agder (Norway) and the Department of Social Anthropology of University of Aegean (Greece).

This short film grew out of collaborative fieldwork conducted during the Encounters Summer School on Lesvos. Working with Eleni Gkrilla and Maggi Asbjørnsen, the project uses movement as both method and subject: gestures, everyday rhythms and improvised performances become a « living glossary” through which the island’s rhythms of leaving, arriving and passing-by are explored. The film’s attention to proximity and distance, to being “far” and “close”, echoes the ethnographic reflections on how dance, local festivities and daily practices shape forms of togetherness and separation on Lesvos. An open-air screening and the conversations that followed with local audiences also fed back into the editing, making the film itself part of an encounter that questions representation, belonging, and the ways we move through an island landscape.

Alongside the short film, the field research also resulted in an article published in Arts Cabinet, a plury-disciplinary research platform.