Celluloid Frontiers: A Missing Can of Film and Stop Genocide

In conjunction with the exhibition Private Frontiers, BAMPFA presents Naeem Mohaiemen’s A Missing Can of Film (2025). Commissioned by EVA Ireland International and the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, the film traces the lost-left politics buried within Zahir Raihan’s Stop Genocide (1971)—a film edited in the style of Soviet Realism and Third Cinema during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. Raihan, a novelist and director, was abducted only forty-five days after the end of the war. A Missing Can of Film combines scenes from Stop Genocide with footage shot at the Bangladesh Film Development Corporation after the nation’s 2024 July Student “Monsoon” Uprising, interrogating the film canister as a vessel of contested history.