Film screening: "Tangled: Filming nearby woollen sheep"

Environmental Humanities South is excited to partner with the Center for Environmental Humanities (CEH) based at Aarhus University, Denmark, to host a special screening of Dr Annika Cápelan's ethnographic film titled "Tangled: Filming nearby woollen sheep". This work emerges out of her EU Marie-Skłodowska Curie Global Fellowship (2022 - 2025). In this session, the film will be screened in Cape Town and Denmark, followed by a discussion.

DATE: 22 May 2025

TIME: 13h00 - 15h00

VENUE: Level 4 Humanities Building, Upper Campus UCT

JOIN ONLINE, LINK: https://aarhusuniversity.zoom.us/j/65255459899

Email zainab.adams@uct.ac.za to RSVP

Bio: Dr. Annika Capelán holds her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from Lund University. Her EU Marie-Skłodowska Curie Global Fellow (MSCA) 2022-2025, is jointly hosted by Aarhus University and the University of Cape Town. Her research focus is on historical, environmental, and material-political aspects of sheep farming and industrial wool production across southern regions. She works with ethnographic methods with an emphasis on multispeciesness, participant observation, and a special interest in visual and collaborative knowledge building

Film synopsis: Wool – as we know it in yarn balls and fine woven fabrics – is soft and often scentless, as though stemming from anywhere or nowhere. In the overall global textile industry, wool fades into the background as a minor contribution. Focusing on merino sheep in the Lesotho highlands, on Patagonia’s vast landscapes, and in the Karoo of southern Africa, Tangled provides a film montage of glimpses into an itchy history of wool as it grows on sheeps’ backs. Each site tells a situated story that speaks to the other sites. In suggesting an understanding of the landscape as part of the sheep, as much as they are part of the landscape, the film sets out to untangle wool with a camera.