Documentary Voices 2023

February 1–April 12, 2023

Our annual series features an international array of recent and historical documentaries and nonfiction films.

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  • Eami

  • Yãmĩyhex, The Woman-Spirit

  • Fad’jal

  • And when I die, I won’t stay dead

  • Expedition Content

  • Mamá

  • Karrabing Film Collective: Day in the Life

  • Marwa Arsanios: Who Is Afraid of Ideology? Part 2

  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • One Among Many: Women Documenting Women

    Wednesday, February 1 7 PM

    In this selection of documentary and ethnographic films, women filmmakers from Lebanon, Senegal, Tanzania, and the United States employ different stylistic approaches and modes of address to depict women’s experience and work.

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  • The Karrabing Film Collective

    Wednesday, February 8 7 PM

    The members of the Australian Indigenous media group the Karrabing Film Collective use cell phones and handheld cameras to record daily life in their rural community as a form of grassroots resistance.

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  • Yãmĩyhex, The Woman-Spirit

    Sueli Maxakali, Isael Maxakali
    Brazil, 2019
    Wednesday, February 15 7 PM
    Gustavo Caboco in Person; Sueli Maxakali, Isael Maxakali, Carolina Canguçu, Roberto Romero, and Natalia Brizuela in Prerecorded Conversation

    Yãmĩyhex, The Woman-Spirit is “a film haunted by a myth, inhabited by the careful construction of rituals and celebration, moved by the force of a spiritual bond with every manifestation of life” (Sheffield DocFest).

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  • Fad’jal

    Safi Faye
    Senegal, 1979
    Wednesday, February 22 7 PM

    In Fad’jal, the groundbreaking Senegalese-French filmmaker and ethnologist Safi Faye investigates traditions of storytelling through a beautiful portrait of her ancestral farming village. 

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  • Short Films by Alice Diop: Towards Tenderness

    Alice Diop
    France, 2016
    Wednesday, March 1 7 PM

    Born in France to Senegalese parents, Alice Diop (Saint Omer) brings a unique perspective to migrant and Black diaspora experience. Influenced by Jean Rouch and Frederick Wiseman, she makes films that bring those on the periphery to the center. 

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  • Out of the Vault: Dead Birds

    Robert Gardner
    United States, 1964
    Sunday, March 5 5 PM
    Introduced by Ernst Karel

    One of the most influential ethnographic films of the 1960s, Dead Birds is director Robert Gardner’s interpretation of life among the Dani people of West Papua. With shorts from his Baliem Valley 1961 series. 

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  • Expedition Content

    Ernst Karel, Veronika Kusumaryati
    United States, 2020
    Wednesday, March 8 7 PM
    Ernst Karel in Person

    This fascinating sonic ethnography, which draws on the audio archive from Robert Gardner’s 1961 expedition to West Papua, is “a mind-expanding inquiry on anthropology” (Manohla Dargis, New York Times).

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  • Mamá

    Xun Sero
    Mexico, 2022
    Wednesday, March 15 7 PM
    Xun Sero and Natalia Brizuela in Livestream Conversation

    Mexican Tzotzil filmmaker Xun Sero’s Mamá is “an extraordinarily sensitive first film where both mother and son open a dialogue in an attempt at self-discovery” (HotDocs).

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  • And when I die, I won’t stay dead

    Billy Woodberry
    United States, Portugal, 2015
    Wednesday, March 22 7 PM
    Les Blank Lecture by Billy Woodberry

    Billy Woodberry’s “daring and accomplished documentary” (New Yorker) of Bob Kaufman, one of the most overlooked of the Beat Generation artists, is lovingly assembled from archival footage, documents, and interviews. With an homage to Ousmane Sembène’s Black Docker.

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  • Eami

    Paz Encina
    Paraguay, 2022

    Cosponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies

    Wednesday, April 5 7 PM
    Paz Encina and Natalia Brizuela in Conversation

    “A hazy daydream of a film,” Eami is “equal parts nature doc and choral poem, an experimental memory essay that’s also an urgent elegy for a people, a forest, a world” (Variety). With Paz Encina’s sound piece Traéme Agua, Traéme Miel.

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  • A Night of Knowing Nothing

    Payal Kapadia
    France, India, 2021
    Wednesday, April 12 7 PM

    In Indian director “Payal Kapadia’s kaleidoscopic, Cannes prize-winning documentary . . . love for the moving image—and love for artistic creativity—marches hand in hand with the fight for political freedom” (Guardian). With a short by Amit Dutta.

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