Ethiopia, Italy and the UK / 1997 / 56mins / Documentary / English, Amharic and Italian

Blood Is Not Fresh Water is the documentary of a passionate journey in Ethiopia, the director's land of origin. Through a portrait of the filmmaker's grandfather, Ato Tekle-sadik Mekuria, Ethiopia's most renowned historian, the story attempts to bypass Eurocentric concepts of Ethiopia by exploring ideas of Ethiopia's origin and the nature of identity. The story goes continually backwards in time, from the present to Ethiopia's colonial past, from its origin myth to the paleo-anthropological discovery of Lucy, the first human being. It does all this with a light hearted and humorous approach that is both sympathetic and compassionate and sees the more serious problems of present day Ethiopia within its unexpectedly rich cultural context.

Theo Eshetu

Theo Eshetu was born in London in 1958 and spent part of his childhood in Ethiopia. He received a degree in Communication Design from North East London Polytechnic and has been working as a video artist and photographer in Italy since 1982. He established White Light Productions in 1986, intending to innovate television programming, and has since received several prizes for his work, including the First Prize at the 1993 Berlin Video Festival for Travelling Light. He works with documentary formats, experimental film, video installations, and photography; covering a wide range of subject matter. He seeks to promote a subjective, personal, and art-based approach to a medium that is now associated with mass communication. He participated at Lavori in Corso at the MACRO in Rome and Digital Africa at the EAI in New York. He was in Africa Remix at the Hayward gallery and in Snap Judgments, curated by Okwui Enwesor at the ICP in New York, the Stedelijk Museum the National Gallery of Canada in Toronto and the Museo Tamayo in Mexico among others. He has participated in the project VISIONARY AFRICA at the BOZAR in the show GEO Graphics curated by Koyo Kouoh and Events of the Self: Portraiture and Social Identity: at the Walther Collection. In 2011 he participated the Sharjah Biennale and is present at the Venice Biennale 2011. Since 1997 he has also worked as a director of cultural documentaries for RAI television and has taught Video Art in Art academies of Carrara and LʼAquila and the La Sapienza University of Rome. Eshetu is a recipient of a DAAD Artist in Residence grant Berlin 2012. Learn More