Leftovers is set in the agro-industrial heart of the Kenyan Rift Valley, where rose farms line the shores of Lake Naivasha. Built on what was once communal land owned by Maasai pastoralists, these farms feature large greenhouses dominating the landscape along South Lake Road. Animals are confined to corridors between the farms in order to reach the lake for water, and roam the old rose beds inside dilapidated greenhouse structures left behind by an abandoned farm. In a small patch of land between two farms – one operational and one in ruins – a herd of cows and their owner find a place to graze. Occasionally, a truck from the neighbouring farm dumps flower waste, such as rose petals and stems, onto this ground for the cows to eat. This short video loop questions the cycle of un/commoning land and its implications, shifting the focus of who and what is left behind while access to food, health and livelihoods becomes fragmented. The video is part of a larger audiovisual project on future-making in the Kenyan Rift Valley, funded by CRC Future Rural Africa and University of Lüneburg.
This work was realized as part of the CRC Future Rural Africa, project Testing Future (PI Martin Zillinger).
Anna Lisa Ramella is a visual and media anthropologist researching and teaching at the intersection of outer space ethnography, mobility and migration studies, media practice theory, post-/decolonial theory and its methods. She currently is junior professor for methods of cultural studies at Leuphana University Lüneburg, with a research project on the Un/known in Outer Space Research. As research associate at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology and postdoc in the CRC "Future Rural Africa" at the University of Cologne, she conducted audiovisual research on future-making, materialities and ruinations among labor migrants in Kenya. She received her PhD from the University of Siegen, "Locating Media", with a project on mobility rhythms and media practices of touring musicians.
Ben Bernhard is a filmmaker and cinematographer working across fiction, art, and documentary. He completed a master’s degree in Cinematography at the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin (dffb) and later received a scholarship at the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles. Since then, he has realized a wide range of films, received multiple awards, and is a member of the German Film Academy, the German Society of Cinematographers (BVK), and the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
He has collaborated for many years with Victor Kossakovsky on films including Aquarela (Oscar shortlist 2020) and Architecton (Berlinale Competition 2024). His work on All That Breathes with Shaunak Sen won prizes at Sundance and Cannes and was nominated for an Oscar in 2023. Alongside his filmmaking, Bernhard also teaches at film schools and gives masterclasses in Germany and internationally.
