Documentary Voices 2022

January 26–April 20, 2022

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

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  • The Washing Society

  • Phases of Matter

  • Collective

  • The Two Sights

  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Upcoming
    Events
  • Selected
    Objects
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • Prism

    Rosine Mbakam, Eléonore Yameogo, An van. Dienderen
    Belgium, 2021
    Wednesday, January 26 7 PM

    A prismatic inquiry into how skin color is seen on screen, this provocative essay film asks whether technology consciously or unconsciously orients itself to depicting white skin as the norm.

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  • 499

    Rodrigo Reyes
    Mexico, 2021
    Wednesday, February 2 7 PM
    Rodrigo Reyes in Person

    In this “truly brilliant accomplishment of unconventional storytelling” (Carlos Aguilar), a conquistador inexplicably finds himself in Mexico, 499 years after conquering Tenochtitlán with Hernán Cortez’s army in 1521. He retraces their original journey across Mexico, a reluctant witness to the ongoing legacy of Spanish conquest.

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  • Surname Viet Given Name Nam

    Trinh T. Minh-ha
    United States, 1989

    BAMPFA Preservation

    Wednesday, February 9 7 PM
    Lecture by Trinh T. Minh-ha

    The history of modern Vietnam and the struggles of its women provide the foundation for this “keenly intelligent, sensuously multilayered” documentary (Stuart Klawans, The Nation). Director Trinh T. Minh-ha gives the fifth Les Blank Lecture prior to the screening.

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  • The Two Sights

    Joshua Bonnetta
    Canada, United Kingdom, 2020
    Wednesday, February 16 7 PM

    In an “eerie and hypnotic” experimental evocation of the gift of second sight, Joshua Bonnetta infused the landscape of Scotland’s Outer Hebrides with otherworldly tales and meanings (Justine Smith, POV).

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  • Phases of Matter

    Deniz Tortum
    Turkey, 2020
    Wednesday, February 23 7 PM
    Ernst Karel in Person

    “A human, curious look at a place where life and death, levity and severity, poetry and confrontation go side by side,” Phases of Matter presents the Istanbul hospital where Deniz Tortum’s father worked for thirty years (Rotterdam International Film Festival).

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  • In Comparison

    Harun Farocki
    Germany, Austria, 2009
    Wednesday, March 2 7 PM
    Domietta Torlasco in Person

    Farocki’s In Comparison considers the brick, that foundational unit of construction, as object, metaphor, and product of labor. With Domietta Torlasco’s Garfield Park, USA and Deniz Tortum and Kathryn Hamilton’s Our Ark, two short essay films.

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  • Chinese Portrait

    Wang Xiaoshuai
    China, 2018
    Wednesday, March 9 7 PM
    Introduced by Andrew F. Jones

    Roughly sixty carefully composed shots of citizens and their environments, recorded over ten years across China, comprise this formal masterpiece, a photo album of an entire nation’s decade. From the director of Beijing Bicycle.

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  • Mr. Bachmann and His Class

    Maria Speth
    Germany, 2021
    Wednesday, March 16 7 PM

    A German schoolteacher welcomes a class of students from twelve different nations in this “affectionate and inspiring portrait of an affectionate and inspiring man” (Variety). 

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  • The Washing Society

    Lizzie Olesker, Lynne Sachs
    United States, 2018
    Wednesday, April 6 7 PM
    Les Blank Lecture by Lynne Sachs

    Olesker and Sachs fold the history of labor and immigration into this intimate chronicle of the disappearing public space of the neighborhood laundromat. With Sachs’s And Then We Marched and E•pis•to•lar•y: Letter to Jean Vigo.

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  • The Short Documentary Films of Sara Gómez

    New Restorations

    Susan Lord will give a free lecture on the practices of the Vulnerable Media Lab Thursday, April 14.

    Wednesday, April 13 7 PM
    Introduced by Susan Lord

    Gómez was one of the most inventive filmmakers of postrevolutionary Cuban cinema. Her recently restored films look at the complexities of the Caribbean island’s social, political, and economic transformation.

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  • The Vulnerable Media Lab: ecologies, economies, and materialities

    Free Admission!

    Susan Lord will introduce a program of Sara Gómez’s films, preserved by the Vulnerable Media Lab, on Wednesday, April 13.

    Thursday, April 14 5 PM
    Lecture by Susan Lord

    Susan Lord presents a lecture on the practices of the Vulnerable Media Lab, which develops methods and processes to ensure culturally diverse “born digital” media history is preserved and made available according to culturally specific and ethically driven forms of access.

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  • Collective

    Alexander Nanau
    Romania, Luxembourg, 2019
    Wednesday, April 20 7 PM
    Cătălin Tolontan and David Barstow in Conversation

    A shattering exposé of systemic corruption, this documentary about the aftermath of a Bucharest nightclub fire “doesn’t just open your eyes but tears you apart by exposing a moral rift with resonance far beyond the film’s home country” (Variety).

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