“Excavating Alternative Histories” is a special program featuring filmmakers who explore narratives that excavate alternative histories, subverting traditional forms of ethnography. These films will be accompanied by a live panel discussion on Dec. 11, between Adam Khalil, Zack Khalil, Naeem Mohaiemen, and Faye Ginsburg, the Director of the Center for Media, Culture and History at NYU. Register here
The panel discussion is co-presented by the ARAB FILM FEST COLLAB (ArteEast, Arab American National Museum, Arab Film and Media Institute, & Mizna) and NYU's Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies and co-sponsored by NYU's Center for Media, Culture, and History.
INAATE/SE/ [it shines a certain way. to a certain place/it flies. falls./], 2016
Adam And Zack Khalil (USA)
The Violence of a Civilization Without Secrets, 2017
Adam and Zack Khalil in collaboration with artist Jackson Polys (USA)
Afsan’s Long Day, 2014
Naeem Mohaiemen (Bangladesh / USA)
This program is part of Alternative Archives: Discourses and Disruptions, an ongoing series of webinars that explore innovative artistic processes and productions from the SWANA region, tackling critical questions around storytelling and archiving in a rapidly evolving digital world, organized by ArteEast in partnership with the Arab American National Museum and NYU's Kevorkian Center.
About the Filmmakers
Naeem Mohaiemen makes films, installations, and writes essays about rhizomatic families, malleable borders, and socialist utopias - beginning from South Asia's two postcolonial markers (1947, 1971) and then radiating outward to transnational linkages. The idea of a future global left, as an alternative to current organizing categories of race, religion, and nation, drives the work. He is author of Prisoners of Shothik Itihash (Kunsthalle Basel, 2014); and co-editor with Eszter Szakacs of Solidarity Must be Defended (Tranzit, forthcoming) and with Lorenzo Fusi of System Error: War is a Force that Gives us Meaning (Sylvana, 2007).
Adam Khalil (Ojibway) is a filmmaker and artist who lives and works in Brooklyn. His practice attempts to subvert traditional forms of ethnography through humor, relation, and transgression. Khalil’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Sundance Film Festival, Walker Arts Center, Lincoln Center, Tate Modern, Toronto Biennial, and Whitney Biennial, among other institutions. Khalil is a core contributor to New Red Order (NRO) and a co-founder of COUSINS Collective. Khalil is the recipient of various fellowships and grants, including but not limited to: Sundance Art of Nonfiction, Jerome Artist Fellowship, and Gates Millennium Scholarship. Khalil received his BA from Bard College.
Zack Khalil (Ojibway) is a filmmaker and artist from Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, currently based in Brooklyn, NY. His work centers indigenous narratives in the present––and looks towards the future—through the use of innovative nonfiction forms. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Lincoln Center, Walker Art Center, New York Film Festival, and the Sundance Film Festival among other institutions. Khalil is the recipient of various fellowships and grants, including the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, Sundance Art of Nonfiction Grant, and Gates Millennium Scholarship. Khalil received his BA from Bard College.
The networks of imagined utopia, through conflagration, are connected by invisible threads that prove fragile in the face of theory-made-practice. Sartre's statement after his visit to Stammheim showed the limitations of his foreword to Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth. The state’s response was to reclaim the powers that had been restricted since the Holocaust: databases, surveillance, selection. Looking at the minuscule membership of Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Faction), Heinrich Boll called it a “war of six against sixty million.” Time shifted positions, allowing both regret and revision. Fischer erased the actions of a youthful barricade and reversed his position during the Balkan genocide, while his old comrade Hans-Joachim Klein went to prison. But what of historian Afsan Chowdhury, sitting alone in his Dhaka home? While others bemoaned never understanding dialectical materialism, Chowdhury read Marx and out-argued his professors. But the men who came one day cared little for all of that––history has often testified that the state likes clean shaven men.
About the Filmmaker
Naeem Mohaiemen makes films, installations, and writes essays about rhizomatic families, malleable borders, and socialist utopias - beginning from South Asia's two postcolonial markers (1947, 1971) and then radiating outward to transnational linkages. The idea of a future global left, as an alternative to current organizing categories of race, religion, and nation, drives the work. He is author of Prisoners of Shothik Itihash (Kunsthalle Basel, 2014); and co-editor with Eszter Szakacs of Solidarity Must be Defended (Tranzit, forthcoming) and with Lorenzo Fusi of System Error: War is a Force that Gives us Meaning (Sylvana, 2007).
- Year2014
- Runtime39 minutes
- LanguageEnglish
- CountryBangladesh
- PremiereOberhausen, Germany
- DirectorNaeem Mohaiemen
- ScreenwriterNaeem Mohaiemen
- Executive ProducerNaeem Mohaiemen
- CinematographerNaeem Mohaiemen
- EditorNaeem Mohaiemen
- Sound DesignMarcelo Añez
“Excavating Alternative Histories” is a special program featuring filmmakers who explore narratives that excavate alternative histories, subverting traditional forms of ethnography. These films will be accompanied by a live panel discussion on Dec. 11, between Adam Khalil, Zack Khalil, Naeem Mohaiemen, and Faye Ginsburg, the Director of the Center for Media, Culture and History at NYU. Register here
The panel discussion is co-presented by the ARAB FILM FEST COLLAB (ArteEast, Arab American National Museum, Arab Film and Media Institute, & Mizna) and NYU's Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies and co-sponsored by NYU's Center for Media, Culture, and History.
INAATE/SE/ [it shines a certain way. to a certain place/it flies. falls./], 2016
Adam And Zack Khalil (USA)
The Violence of a Civilization Without Secrets, 2017
Adam and Zack Khalil in collaboration with artist Jackson Polys (USA)
Afsan’s Long Day, 2014
Naeem Mohaiemen (Bangladesh / USA)
This program is part of Alternative Archives: Discourses and Disruptions, an ongoing series of webinars that explore innovative artistic processes and productions from the SWANA region, tackling critical questions around storytelling and archiving in a rapidly evolving digital world, organized by ArteEast in partnership with the Arab American National Museum and NYU's Kevorkian Center.
About the Filmmakers
Naeem Mohaiemen makes films, installations, and writes essays about rhizomatic families, malleable borders, and socialist utopias - beginning from South Asia's two postcolonial markers (1947, 1971) and then radiating outward to transnational linkages. The idea of a future global left, as an alternative to current organizing categories of race, religion, and nation, drives the work. He is author of Prisoners of Shothik Itihash (Kunsthalle Basel, 2014); and co-editor with Eszter Szakacs of Solidarity Must be Defended (Tranzit, forthcoming) and with Lorenzo Fusi of System Error: War is a Force that Gives us Meaning (Sylvana, 2007).
Adam Khalil (Ojibway) is a filmmaker and artist who lives and works in Brooklyn. His practice attempts to subvert traditional forms of ethnography through humor, relation, and transgression. Khalil’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Sundance Film Festival, Walker Arts Center, Lincoln Center, Tate Modern, Toronto Biennial, and Whitney Biennial, among other institutions. Khalil is a core contributor to New Red Order (NRO) and a co-founder of COUSINS Collective. Khalil is the recipient of various fellowships and grants, including but not limited to: Sundance Art of Nonfiction, Jerome Artist Fellowship, and Gates Millennium Scholarship. Khalil received his BA from Bard College.
Zack Khalil (Ojibway) is a filmmaker and artist from Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, currently based in Brooklyn, NY. His work centers indigenous narratives in the present––and looks towards the future—through the use of innovative nonfiction forms. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Lincoln Center, Walker Art Center, New York Film Festival, and the Sundance Film Festival among other institutions. Khalil is the recipient of various fellowships and grants, including the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, Sundance Art of Nonfiction Grant, and Gates Millennium Scholarship. Khalil received his BA from Bard College.
The networks of imagined utopia, through conflagration, are connected by invisible threads that prove fragile in the face of theory-made-practice. Sartre's statement after his visit to Stammheim showed the limitations of his foreword to Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth. The state’s response was to reclaim the powers that had been restricted since the Holocaust: databases, surveillance, selection. Looking at the minuscule membership of Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Faction), Heinrich Boll called it a “war of six against sixty million.” Time shifted positions, allowing both regret and revision. Fischer erased the actions of a youthful barricade and reversed his position during the Balkan genocide, while his old comrade Hans-Joachim Klein went to prison. But what of historian Afsan Chowdhury, sitting alone in his Dhaka home? While others bemoaned never understanding dialectical materialism, Chowdhury read Marx and out-argued his professors. But the men who came one day cared little for all of that––history has often testified that the state likes clean shaven men.
About the Filmmaker
Naeem Mohaiemen makes films, installations, and writes essays about rhizomatic families, malleable borders, and socialist utopias - beginning from South Asia's two postcolonial markers (1947, 1971) and then radiating outward to transnational linkages. The idea of a future global left, as an alternative to current organizing categories of race, religion, and nation, drives the work. He is author of Prisoners of Shothik Itihash (Kunsthalle Basel, 2014); and co-editor with Eszter Szakacs of Solidarity Must be Defended (Tranzit, forthcoming) and with Lorenzo Fusi of System Error: War is a Force that Gives us Meaning (Sylvana, 2007).
- Year2014
- Runtime39 minutes
- LanguageEnglish
- CountryBangladesh
- PremiereOberhausen, Germany
- DirectorNaeem Mohaiemen
- ScreenwriterNaeem Mohaiemen
- Executive ProducerNaeem Mohaiemen
- CinematographerNaeem Mohaiemen
- EditorNaeem Mohaiemen
- Sound DesignMarcelo Añez