The 49th Year

the time is now. is a film portrait of the Japanese shamanic improvisation duo IRO. The couple Shizuko and Toshio Orimo have worked together since 1981. Their music, their activism in the peace and anti-nuclear movement, and their free-spirited way of life reflect an animist and pantheistic worldview that rejects commercialism in all its forms.

Holzfeind’s documentary style video artwork addresses the wider social and political phenomena of globalisation by diving into the fragmented scenes of the lives of Romanian refugees whose lives oscillate between their current ‘home’ in Austria and their original home in Romania. From the harsh working conditions that are embedded in their middle-class jobs to the poverty of refugee camps, the Holzfeind casts a light on the larger totality of globalisation by deciphering the blurred identities of these refugees, and by large, any immigrant that are going through similar, perhaps more poignant experiences around the globe.