Unpacking the ArteArchive

I Am From Here, I Am From There: Writers in Exile

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Available July 19, 2025 4:15 AM UTC
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4 films in package
Men of My Dreams
A reflection on the artist’s exile, the film unfolds a series of vignettes that toy with the unstable ground between dream and reality. Seeking the idea of ‘home’ in the lineage of antifascist thought and poetry the film connects Los Angeles to the artist’s intellectual, political, and affective spaces of belonging.
Off-White Tulips (Kırık Beyaz Laleler)
Off-White Tulips is an intimate, meditative, and tender essay-film composed as a fictional exchange between James Baldwin and the artist, Aykan Safoğlu. The work weaves Sedat Pakay's photographs depicting Baldwin throughout his decade living in Turkey (which was as productive as it was strenuous) with portraits of the artist and his family, including some which document the country’s 1979 oil crisis and its national entry in the Eurovision competition in 1980.
Mahmoud Darwich, as the Land Is the Language
A documentary portrait of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwich (1942-2008).
Genet in Chatila
Mounia, a young woman, sets off in the footsteps of Jean Genet in Chatila and Amman.
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Featuring: Aykan Safoğlu, Simone Bitton, Elias Sanbar, Richard Dindo and Gelare Khoshgozaran


I Am From Here, I Am From There: Writers in Exile presents films that blend fiction and documentary practices in their profiles of writers living in exile. From Mahmoud Darwish to Jean Genet, the writers in these films are either onscreen presences or spectral conduits for reflecting on the heterogenous aspects of diasporic identity. Spanning from Lebanon to Los Angeles, the program generates several connective threads that transcend time and space, complicating rigid notions of national identity and venerating the potency of the written word as instrumental to a dialectic that’s fundamentally rooted in affirming human dignity. 


I Am From Here, I Am From There: Writers in Exile is curated by Nick Kouhi and is co-presented by ArteEast and DCTV's Firehouse Cinema. This program is part of the legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, which preserves and presents over 20 years of film and video programming by ArteEast. A selection of the program will be presented in-person at DCTV's Firehouse Cinema, on July 29th starting 6:30 pm. The screening will be followed by a discussion between poet and scholar Sinan Antoon, and the curator Nick Kouhi. The full I Am From Here, I Am From There: Writers in Exile program will be available online on artearchive.org from July 19 - 30, 2025.

Men of My Dreams unfolds a series of vignettes that toy with the unstable ground between fact and fiction. Thinking about this past as being materially present in fragments of knowledge carried by the body, MEN OF MY DREAMS, delves into the artist’s personal history by invoking a group of men that surrounded the artist through their writing, singing, filming, and activism while growing up in Tehran and moving to the US, including: writers Edward Said and Roberto Bolaño; poet Federico Garcia Lorca; filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini; singer Farhad Mehrad; Iranian journalist and poet Khosrow Golesorkhi; and also Saeed, her father.

  • Year
    2020
  • Runtime
    10 minutes
  • Language
    English
  • Country
    United States
  • Subtitle Language
    English
  • Director
    Gelare Khoshgozaran
  • Editor
    Gelare Khoshgozaran
  • Sound Design
    Jimena Sarno
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