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

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Past
Films
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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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Documentary Voices 2023

February 1–April 12, 2023

Every year we present an international selection of inventive documentary and nonfiction films, past and present. This year we feature a number of ethnographic films, many by women, sometimes from an outsider’s perspective, but more often depicting the filmmakers’ own communities. The films made by Indigenous makers—from the Karrabing Film Collective to Sueli and Isael Maxakali—variously incorporate dreams, myths, and ancestral memories as ways to preserve their history, depict everyday scenarios and struggles, and construct equitable alternatives. Mexican Tzotzil filmmaker Xun Sero uses conversations to uncover his mother’s life and examine cycles of violence in his community, while Paraguayan filmmaker Paz Encina, who we are delighted will be in person thanks to the Center for Latin American Studies, has created a mythological tale born out of her time with the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode people in the Paraguayan Chaco. Local sound artist and designer Ernst Karel will be in person to discuss his almost imageless film, Expedition Content, as part of two programs related to Robert Gardner’s 1961 West Papua expedition. Two films by Senegalese anthropologist and filmmaker Safi Faye of her village are complemented by two early documentaries by Alice Diop, who as a French Senegalese director (Saint Omer) focuses on migrant and Black diaspora experience, including her first visit to Senegal. In Payal Kapadia’s first feature, a film student’s letters give insight into student protests across India against religious and caste-based discrimination. Again and again, filmmaking itself becomes an act of resistance, moves the periphery to the center, and reveals hidden worlds and neglected stories through sensory imagination.

—Kathy Geritz, Film Curator

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This series, which continues in March and April, is curated by Natalia Brizuela and Kathy Geritz and is presented in conjunction with Brizuela’s UC Berkeley course Documentary Forms.

The conversations with the filmmakers of Yãmĩyhex, The Woman-Spirit and with Xun Sero are made possible with support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Alice Diop’s films are presented with the assistance of Maud Guenoux, Point du Jour, and Hans-Joachim Fetzer at Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art. The programs related to Robert Gardner’s New Guinea expedition are presented thanks to Ernst Karel, Documentary Educational Resources (DER), and Anthology Film Archives’s “Expedition Content” Expanded series, and with support from the National Endowment for the Arts for our Out of the Vault programs. Gustavo Caboco’s and Paz Encina’s visits are made possible with support from the Center for Latin American Studies.