Amar Kanwar, The Trilogy
A Season Outside
(1997, 30 min.)
To Remember
(2003, 8 min.)
A Night of Prophecy
(2002, 77 min.)
Opening Screening (A Season Outside only): Fri, Feb 22, 2 pm
Feb 23–May 22: Mon, Wed, Sun, 11 am; Tues, Sat, 2 pm

The Trilogy, a set of short films by Amar Kanwar, blends a documentary approach with personal insight to explore the contentious politics of society, religion, and identity in India. A Season Outside portrays the ritualized military standoffs that occur at the India-Pakistan border; To Remember leads the viewer on a silent tour of the site of Gandhi’s assassination; A Night of Prophecy uses a chorus of poems, chants, and songs to highlight issues of caste, poverty, and disenfranchisement. English subtitles. Total runtime: 115 min.

The Treachery of the Moon
(2012, 13 min., dir. Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook)
Doghole
(2010, 22 min., dir. Wong Hoy Cheong)
Communists Like Us
(2006–10, 23 min., dir. The Otolith Group)
The Cloud of Unknowing
(2011, 28 min., dir. Ho Tzu Nyen)
Opening Screening: Fri, Feb 22, 2:30 pm
Feb 23–May 22: Mon, Wed, Sun, 2 pm; Tues, Sat, 11 am

This series examines different moments in the social, political, and cultural histories of South and Southeast Asia. The Treachery of the Moon presents the moral quandaries faced in Thailand during recent political clashes. Doghole explores Japanese colonization and violence in pre-independent Malaya. Communists Like Us weaves dialogue from Jean-Luc Godard’s La Chinoise with archival photographs of Indian delegates and activists with counterparts in Asia. The Cloud of Unknowning explores the illuminative experience through the object and symbol of the cloud within Asian and Western reference. English subtitles. Total runtime: 86 min.

March 1, 2 pm

Selections from the Afghan Films Archive
(1967–80, 54 min.)

In these newsreels, documentary and propaganda shorts, and feature film clips drawn from the archive of Afghan Films, Afghanistan’s national film institute, the changing fashions, mores and politics of the constantly reconfigured state are reflected. With films from the end of the monarchy (the Zahir Shah period), the Daoud republic, the Afghan Communist republic, and the Soviet puppet state.

Khan-e-Tarikh
(The House of History, 1996, 20 min., dir. Qader Tahiri)

The only documentary produced by Afghan Films during the civil war years, The House of History is an intensely personal essay film directed by longtime cameramen Qader Tahiri that incorporates footage shot by six other cameramen from 1991–96 and poetic narration by Sher Mohammed Khara. The first half chronicles the destruction of Kabul during the civil war, while the second half meditates on the ruin of Kabul’s archaeological museum and the efforts to save fragments left behind after its destruction in 1991.

Fiction Shorts by the Jump Cut Film Collective
(2009–10, 10 min.)

The Jump Cut Film Collective was founded in Kabul in 2009 by a group of young, independent filmmakers who share both production duties and formal concerns. In the Name of Opium (dir. Sayed Jalal Hussaini) lies at the more experimental end of their output, with a completely nontraditional, circular or open-ended narrative structure and no dialogue. Formally, however, it is among the most completely realized of their films, with strong cinematography setting up a series of memorable images, each a small story in itself, and each a part of a larger opium-driven vicious cycle.

Feature: Akhtar Maskara
(Akhtar the Joker, 1980, 90 min., dir. Latif Ahmadi)

A stinging social critique of the gap between rich and poor, old and new Kabulis at the end of the 1970s, and the story of an unusual young man who falls into the cracks in between. Based on the novel by Aham Rahaward Zariab, and commissioned by the Parcham government, the film was shot by beloved director Latif Ahmadi in only 18 days; perhaps because of the literary source material, perhaps because of the compressed production time, it has a quality unlike anything else in Afghan cinema, with sharp cinematography, a twisting plot, and occasional breaks where our unreliable narrator (Faqir Nabi) addresses the camera directly.

Total run time 169 min.

March 15, 2 pm

Documentary Shorts from Ateliers Varan Kabul
(2011, 47 min.)

Ateliers Varan, the documentary training program initiated by direct cinema pioneer Jean Rouch, has operated workshops in Kabul since 2006, in cooperation with Afghan Films and Radio Television Afghanistan. Shorts produced in Varan Kabul workshops have been screened in major documentary film festivals and broadcast internationally. The shorts Dusty Night and The Postman were produced during a workshop around “The Streets of Kabul,” and observe the rituals and rhythms of the city without judgment or commentary, unless offered by the participants observed. In Mohamed Ali Hazara’s Dusty Night, a group of street cleaners who fight a losing battle against the ever-present dust coating the city, and in Wahid Nazir’s The Postman, the eponymous postman Khan Agha attempts to deliver mail in a city reconstructed without a formal system of street names or house numbers.

Fiction Shorts by the Jump Cut Film Collective
(2009–10, 28 min.)

The Jump Cut Film Collective was founded in Kabul in 2009 by a group of young, independent filmmakers, who share both production duties and formal concerns. The early shorts ANT (dir. Hashem Didari) and Devious (dir. Sayed Jalal Hussaini) display Jump Cut’s preoccupation with narrative filmmaking that uses nonlinear temporal structures, as well as their interest in the illegal and informal economies, the petty and not so petty thefts, grifts, and deceits that spring from the inequities and poverty of Kabul.

Feature: Kabuli Kid
(2009, 94 min., dir. Barmak Akram)

In writer-director Barmak Akram’s debut feature, the life of cab driver Khaled (Hadji Gul) is thrown for a loop when he discovers that his last passenger left an infant boy in the backseat. Determined to do the right thing, Khaled embarks upon a chaotic adventure from one end of war-torn Kabul to the other to find the mother, all the while finding himself increasingly attached to the young life that fate has placed in his hands.

Total run time 169 min.

March 22, 2 pm

Selections from the Afghan Films Archive
(1967–80, 54 min.)

In these newsreels, documentary and propaganda shorts, and feature film clips drawn from the archive of Afghan Films, Afghanistan’s national film institute, the changing fashions, mores, and politics of the constantly reconfigured state are reflected. With films from the end of the monarchy (the Zahir Shah period), the Daoud republic, the Afghan Communist republic, and the Soviet puppet state.

Khan-e-Tarikh
(The House of History, 1996, 20 min., dir. Qader Tahiri)

The only documentary produced by Afghan Films during the civil war years, The House of History is an intensely personal essay film directed by longtime cameramen Qader Tahiri that incorporates footage shot by six other cameramen from 1991–96, and poetic narration by Sher Mohammed Khara. The first half chronicles the destruction of Kabul during the civil war, while the second half meditates on the ruin of Kabul’s archaeological museum and the efforts to save fragments left behind after its destruction in 1991.

Fiction Shorts by the Jump Cut Film Collective
(2009–10, 10 min.)

The Jump Cut Film Collective was founded in Kabul in 2009 by a group of young, independent filmmakers, who share both production duties and formal concerns. In the Name of Opium (dir. Sayed Jalal Hussaini) lies at the more experimental end of their output, with a completely nontraditional, circular or open-ended narrative structure and no dialogue. Formally, however, it is among the most completely realized of their films, with strong cinematography setting up a series of memorable images, each a small story in itself, and each a part of a larger opium-driven vicious cycle.

Feature: Akhtar Maskara
(Akhtar the Joker, 1980, 90 min., dir. Latif Ahmadi)

A stinging social critique of the gap between rich and poor, old and new Kabulis at the end of the 1970s, and the story of an unusual young man who falls into the cracks in between. Based on the novel by Aham Rahaward Zariab, and commissioned by the Parcham government, the film was shot by beloved director Latif Ahmadi in only eighteen days; perhaps because of the literary source material, perhaps because of the compressed production time, it has a quality unlike anything else in Afghan cinema, with sharp cinematography, a twisting plot, and occasional breaks where our unreliable narrator (Faqir Nabi) addresses the camera directly.

Total running time 174 min

March 29, 2 pm

Documentary Shorts from Ateliers Varan Kabul
(2011, 47 min.)

Ateliers Varan, the documentary training program initiated by direct cinema pioneer Jean Rouch, has operated workshops in Kabul since 2006, in cooperation with Afghan Films and Radio Television Afghanistan. Shorts produced in Varan Kabul workshops have been screened in major documentary film festivals and broadcast internationally. The shorts Dusty Night and The Postman were produced during a workshop around “The Streets of Kabul,” and observe the rituals and rhythms of the city without judgment or commentary, unless offered by the participants observed. In Mohamed Ali Hazara’s Dusty Night, a group of street cleaners who fight a losing battle against the ever-present dust coating the city, and in Wahid Nazir’s The Postman, the eponymous postman Khan Agha attempts to deliver mail in a city reconstructed without a formal system of street names or house numbers.

Fiction Shorts by the Jump Cut Film Collective
(2009–10, 28 min.)

The Jump Cut Film Collective was founded in Kabul in 2009 by a group of young, independent filmmakers, who share both production duties and formal concerns. The early shorts ANT (dir. Hashem Didari) and Devious (dir. Sayed Jalal Hussaini) display Jump Cut’s preoccupation with narrative filmmaking that uses nonlinear temporal structures, as well as their interest in the illegal and informal economies, the petty and not so petty thefts, grifts, and deceits that spring from the inequities and poverty of Kabul.

Feature: Mujasemaha Mekhandan
(The Sculptures Are Laughing, 1976, 81 min., dir. Toryalai Shafaq)

The deliriously paced story of an artist who falls in love with a spoiled rich girl, who marries a gangster that then draws both her and her former love into his wacky schemes. A window into life in Daoud’s republic, from art school and fashion shows to house parties and weddings.

Total run time 156 min.

Stories from Southeast Asia

nDudah
(2009, 22 min., dir. FX Harsono)
Omkoi District, Pa-an Village
(2005, 15 min., dir. Sutthirat Supaparinya)
The Clinic
(2010, 21 min., dir. Aung Min)
Fri, Apr 5, 12, 19, and 26, 2 pm

Three short films from Myanmar, Thailand, and Indonesia explore how everyday minutiae are weighted with historical implication, the lasting trauma of ethnic massacre, and the struggle to coexist in an unfamiliar environment. English subtitles. Total runtime: 58 min.

Century of Birthing
(Siglo ng pagluluwal, 2011, 355 min., dir. Lav Diaz)
Fri, May 3, 10, and 17, 11 am

Lav Diaz, dubbed the “ideological father of New Philippine Cinema,” intertwines the seemingly unrelated tales of a filmmaker struggling to finish his film and a woman in a rural cult. The result is an epic meditation on the roles of artist, prophet, and acolyte. English subtitles.

No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia exhibition films and film program are part of the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative.