Documentary Voices

February 5–April 30, 2025

BAMPFA’s annual selection of compelling nonfiction films includes the award-winning Palestinian/Israeli documentary No Other Land, as well as films by Dana Claxton, Kevin Jerome Everson, Asmae El Moudir, and Ibrahim Nash’at. With Sergei Loznitsa, Rick Prelinger, Jenni Olson, Elizabeth Ai, Pinar Öğrenci, and Sylvain George in person.

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  • Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor: No Other Land, 2024

  • Michael Dweck, Gregory Kershaw: Gaucho, Gaucho, 2024

  • Sergei Loznitsa: Factory, 2004

  • Kevin Jerome Everson: Ten Five in the Grass, 2012

  • Sylvain George: Obscure Night—Goodbye Here, Anywhere, 2023

  • Jenni Olson: The Royal Road, 2015

  • Elizabeth Ai: New Wave, 2024

  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Upcoming Films

  • No Other Land

    Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor
    Palestine, Norway, 2024
    Wednesday, February 12 7:00 PM
    Introduced by Ussama Makdisi

    Made over five years by a collective of Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers, No Other Land chronicles the attempts of the inhabitants of Palestinian villages in the West Bank to resist the destruction of their homes and expropriation of their land by the Israeli military.

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    SOLD OUT
  • No Other Land

    Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor
    Palestine, Norway, 2024
    Friday, February 14 4:00 PM

    Made over five years by a collective of Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers, No Other Land chronicles the attempts of the inhabitants of Palestinian villages in the West Bank to resist the destruction of their homes and expropriation of their land by the Israeli military.

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    SOLD OUT
  • I Am Ishi: The Performance Art Film

    Dana Claxton
    Canada, 2023
    Wednesday, February 19 7:00 PM
    Introduced by Dmitri Brown

    Drawing from and expanding on James Luna’s ISHI: The Archive Performance, Dana Claxton and members of the Ishi Collective interrogate the legacy of colonial museum practices through the tragic story of the last known survivor of the Yahi people.

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  • Gaucho Gaucho

    Michael Dweck, Gregory Kershaw
    United States, Argentina, 2024
    Wednesday, February 26 7:00 PM
    Introduction by Leila Weefur

    These two films document contemporary cowboy culture on two continents. Gaucho Gaucho chronicles the everyday life of Argentine cowhands, while Ten Five in the Grass captures the preparations for a calf roping event on the Black rodeo circuit.

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  • Rick Prelinger’s Lost Landscapes

    Wednesday, March 5 7:00 PM
    Les Blank Lecture: Rick Prelinger

    The annual Les Blank Lecture is presented by archivist, filmmaker, educator, and curator Rick Prelinger. Prelinger will present excerpts from his Lost Landscapes compilations and discuss the importance of archiving home movies and industrial, educational, and ephemeral films.

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  • Hollywoodgate

    Ibrahim Nash’at
    United States, Germany, 2023
    Wednesday, March 12 7:00 PM
    Introduced by Jason Spingarn-Koff

    Unprecedented and audacious, director Ibrahim Nash’at’s Hollywoodgate spends a year inside Afghanistan following the Taliban as they take possession of the cache of weapons America left behind—and transform from a fundamentalist militia into a heavily armed military regime.

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  • The Mother of All Lies

    Asmae El Moudir
    Morocco, 2024
    Wednesday, March 19 7:00 PM
    Introduced by Paola Bacchetta

    “The delicate mix of handmade replicas and oral testimony brilliantly evokes the personal and collective trauma that stem from Morocco’s ‘Years of Lead’—a period of state brutality under Hassan II’s dictatorial rule” (Phuong Le, Guardian).

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  • The Royal Road

    Jenni Olson
    United States, 2015
    Wednesday, April 2 7:00 PM
    Jenni Olson and Kelly Vance in Conversation

    A cinematic essay in defense of remembering, a primer on Junipero Serra’s Spanish colonization of California and the Mexican–American War, alongside intimate reflections on nostalgia, the pursuit of unavailable women, butch identity, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Screens with 575 Castro St., a haunting remembrance of Harvey Milk.

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  • New Wave

    Elizabeth Ai
    United States, 2024
    Wednesday, April 9 7:00 PM
    Elizabeth Ai and Peter Zinoman in Conversation

    Elizabeth Ai explores the significance of electronic New Wave music and punk/goth aesthetics for a generation of Vietnamese American youth coming of age in the 1980s and grappling with the weight of their parents’ unspoken traumas.

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  • The Avalanche

    Pinar Öğrenci
    Germany, Turkey, 2022

    Free for UC Berkeley students, staff, and faculty

    Mosse Lecture by Pinar Öğrenci on tracing histories of displacement in constellation

    In cooperation with the symposium Media and Migration in a Digital Age

    Wednesday, April 16 7:00 PM
    Pinar Öğrenci, Deniz Göktürk, and Minoo Moallem in Conversation

    Pinar Öğrenci explores the complex and brutal history and foreboding geography of her father’s home, Müküs, within the mountainous region in southern Van, on Turkey’s border with Iran.

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  • Two Films by Pinar Öğrenci

    Free for UC Berkeley students, staff, and faculty

    Friday, April 18 2:30 PM
    Pinar Öğrenci, Deniz Göktürk, and Christine Philliou in Conversation

    Pinar Öğrenci presents two documentaries exploring the effects of nationalism, war, and migration, one through the history of lokum (Turkish delight) and the other chronicling the living conditions of Turkish guest workers in Kreuzberg, Berlin.

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  • Obscure Night—Goodbye Here, Anywhere

    Sylvain George
    France, Switzerland, 2023
    Wednesday, April 30 7:00 PM
    Sylvain George and Debarati Sanyal in Conversation

    In the Spanish enclave of Melilla, Morocco, a group of youths try to get to Europe. Obscure Night—Goodbye Here, Anywhere focuses on a reality the Western world would rather not see, dissident dreams that transcend geographical boundaries.

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Past Films

  • Mosse Lecture: Sergei Loznitsa

    Free Admission

    Wednesday, February 5 7:00 PM
    Sergei Loznitsa and Deniz Göktürk in Conversation

    Factory showcases Sergei Loznitsa’s approach to nonfiction, working with original camerawork and mining the archives for imagery, with the annual Mosse Lecture.

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