Documentary Voices

February 4–April 22, 2026

This array of innovative nonfiction films documents the labor of truckers, models, cowboys, and a Palestinian photojournalist, and chronicles war and resistance, colonialism, climate, and more. With filmmakers Reid Davenport, Lucrecia Martel, Amy Reid, and Jeffrey Skoller in person.

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Amy Reid: Long Haulers, 2020
Sepideh Farsi: Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, 2025
Michael Dweck, Gregory Kershaw: Gaucho Gaucho, 2024
Frederick Wiseman: Model, 1980

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Upcoming Films

Gaucho Gaucho
Michael Dweck, Gregory Kershaw
United States, Argentina, 2024
Wednesday, February 18, 7 PM
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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Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk
Sepideh Farsi
France, Palestine, Iran, 2025
Wednesday, February 25, 7 PM
Introduced by Ussama Makdisi
Sepidah Farsi’s yearlong conversation with Palestinian poet and photojournalist Fatma Hassona, killed by Israeli airstrike in April 2025, is “a tremendously moving portrait of resistance under siege” (Isaac Feidberg, RogerEbert.com).
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Occupation Diaries: Three Portraits
Wednesday, March 4, 7 PM
Jeffrey Skoller and Jonathan Mackris in Conversation
Jeffrey Skoller presents two films dealing with memories of war and resistance: his own portrait of a ninety-three-year-old’s account of his participation in the guerrilla resistance in Nazi-occupied Greece and Želimir Žilnik’s Uprising in Jazak.
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Kill the Documentary
Wednesday, March 11, 7 PM
A tribute to the late filmmaker Jill Godmilow, this program consists of Harun Farocki’s blistering demonstration of the murderous mechanisms of capitalism, Inextinguishable Fire (1969); Godmilow’s 1998 shot-for-shot remake of that film; and Joyce Wieland’s 1968 whimsical and profound antiwar movie.
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Life After
Reid Davenport
United States, 2025
Les Blank Lecture
Wednesday, March 18, 7 PM
Reid Davenport and Karen Nakamura in Conversation
Reid Davenport brings missing voices from the disability community to the ongoing debate about assisted dying and asks a probing question: Why is it acceptable to give disabled people the means to die, before supporting them in the chance to live?
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The Tree of Authenticity
Sammy Baloji
Belgium, Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2025
Wednesday, April 1, 7 PM
Introduced by Victor Ochieng
The Tree of Authenticity recounts the stigma of ecological destruction that began at the time of colonization through the voices of two scientists who worked at Yangambi INERA Research Station in the Congo between 1910 and 1950: Paul Panda Farnana and Abiron Beirnaert.
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Faya dayi
Jessica Beshir
Ethiopia, United States, Qatar, 2021
Wednesday, April 8, 7 PM
Jessica Beshir and shah noor hussein in Conversation
“A nonfiction work of sensory immersion that’s part anthropology, part poetry” (Hollywood Reporter), the stunning Faya dayi explores the khat trade that dominates rural Ethiopia, circling between youths with little hope and their elders, who are dependent on the dream state the leaf creates.
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Our Land/Nuestra Tierra
Lucrecia Martel
Argentina, United States, Mexico, France, Denmark, Netherlands, 2025
Wednesday, April 15, 7 PM
Lucrecia Martel, Ernesto de Carvalho, and Natalia Brizuela in Conversation
“This film chronicles Argentina’s strategies to deny the Chuschagasta Community their territory. Drawing from the 2018 trial of Javier Chocobar’s assassins (2009), community conversations, and their photo archives, we reconstructed the community’s journey from the 17th century to today” (Lucrecia Martel).
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Canuto’s Transformation
Ariel Kuaray Ortega, Ernesto de Carvalho
Brazil, 2023
Friday, April 17, 7 PM
Ernesto de Carvalho, Lucrecia Martel, and Natalia Brizuela in Conversation
A compelling hybrid documentary filmed in a Mbyá-Guaraní community on the border of Brazil and Argentina deals with the local story of a man who transformed into a jaguar.
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Dreams Are Colder Than Death
Arthur Jafa
United States, 2013
Wednesday, April 22, 7 PM
Hortense Spillers and Rizvana Bradley in Conversation
Fifty years after Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, African American filmmakers, artists, and intellectuals reflect on the goals and ambitions of the civil rights movement and where things stand today.
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Past Films

Long Haulers
Amy Reid
United States, 2020
Wednesday, February 4 7 PM
Amy Reid and Kate MacKay in Conversation
Riding with three long-haul truck drivers, filmmaker Amy Reid documents their work, observations on the economic importance of trucking, and reflections on being among the few women in the profession. With Katarina Jazbec’s investigation into the work of lashers in the port of Rotterdam.
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Model
Frederick Wiseman
United States, 1980
4K Digital Restoration
Wednesday, February 11 7 PM
Model captures the inner workings of Zoli, a New York fashion modeling agency, and the labor of the statuesque men and women represented there.
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Documentary Voices

February 4–April 22, 2026

BAMPFA’s annual Documentary Voices series returns in February with a selection of classic and contemporary nonfiction films from around the world. The series begins with four programs that highlight compelling approaches to documenting different kinds of labor. Bay Area filmmaker Amy Reid presents her 2020 film Long Haulers, an exploration into the lives and labor of three women truck drivers, which plays with Katarina Jazbec’s investigation into the labor of lashers, who in the heavily automated environment of the port of Rotterdam, physically secure cargo. The great documentarian Frederick Wiseman’s 1980 film Model depicts the action around Zoli, a bustling New York modeling agency. A staple of fiction filmmaking since the birth of the medium, the skill and labor of contemporary cowboys and cowgirls is depicted in Gaucho Gaucho, which chronicles the everyday life of Argentine cowhands, and Ten Five in the Grass, which captures the preparations for a calf roping event on the Black rodeo circuit. The perilous work of journalism in a war zone has become even more deadly since the start of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. Iranian filmmaker Sepideh Farsi’s Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk is a moving portrait of one of the hundreds of reporters killed there, photojournalist and poet Fatma Hassona.

Documentary Voices continues this spring with films about war and resistance. Jeffrey Skoller presents his latest portrait of a nonagenarian neighbor recounting his wartime experiences, along with Želimir Žilnik’s 1973 film made with survivors of the Nazi occupation of a town in former Yugoslavia. A program of films by Harun Farocki, Jill Godmilow, and Joyce Wieland offers thoughtful approaches to documenting war—in this case, the American war in Vietnam. Les Blank’s generous, humane approach to filmmaking, and his dedication to documenting traditional American cultures, is reflected in the works of Reid Davenport, the creator of award-winning films about the experience of being disabled, and BAMPFA’s 2026 Les Blank Lecturer. Davenport’s latest film, Life After, asks, why it is acceptable to give disabled people the means to die, before supporting them in the chance to live. The human, environmental, and cultural impacts of colonialism are addressed in different ways by Sammy Baloji’s The Tree of Authenticity, Jessica Beshir’s Faya dayi, and Lucrecia Martel’s Our Land/Nuestra Tierra. The series wraps up with Arthur Jafa’s 2013 essay film Dreams Are Colder Than Death, in which contemporary Black thinkers reflect on the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

—Kate MacKay, Film Curator

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Documentary Voices is curated by Deniz Göktürk and Kate MacKay and is presented in conjunction with Göktürk’s UC Berkeley course Documentary Forms.

The Les Blank Lecture is presented with support of the Les Blank Fund. Hortense Spillers’s visit is in conjunction with her Una’s Lecture and supported by the Townsend Center for the Humanities. Lucrecia Martel’s and Ernesto de Carvalho’s visits are supported by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and UC Berkeley’s Department of Film & Media. Thanks to Brett Kashmere, Zachary Epcar, Canyon Cinema; Antje Ehmann, Harun Farocki GbR; Colleen Cassingham, Multitude Films; Rosa Spaliviero, Marek Szponik, Twenty Nine Studio & Production; and Sarita Žilnik.