Documentary Voices 2024

February 7–April 24, 2024

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

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Richland
three sparks
I Heard it Through the Grapevine
Ch’ul Be, Sacred Path
Kuifi ul

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Past Films

Richland
Irene Lusztig
United States, 2023
Closed captioned
Wednesday, February 7 7 PM
Irene Lusztig in Person
Irene Lusztig’s portrait of Richland, Washington, contrasts the city’s uncannily idyllic surface with the murderous history and lies on which it was built. This is a trenchant accounting of the human and environmental price paid for a “good life.”
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Skip Norman: Collaborations
Wednesday, February 14 7 PM
Introduced by Deniz Göktürk
Deeply collaborative, and with a political alignment that extended from the classroom to the streets, the work produced by the inaugural (1966) cohort of the DFFB rallied against the injustices they saw around them. With films by Harun Farocki, Helke Sander, and others.
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I Heard It Through the Grapevine
Dick Fontaine, Pat Hartley
United States, 1982
New Digital Restoration
Wednesday, February 21 7 PM
Introduced by Stephen Best
Dick Fontaine’s record of James Baldwin’s 1980 journey to visit the sites and speak with fellow survivors of the civil rights movement, I Heard It Through the Grapevine remains a timely and layered interrogation of American history. With Sedat Pakay’s portrait of Baldwin in Istanbul.
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three sparks
Naomi Uman
Mexico/Albania, 2023
Wednesday, February 28 7 PM
Continuing her focus on rural agricultural communities, traditions, and histories, Naomi Uman’s three sparks is a cinematic triptych showing the struggle and beauty of village life in the Albanian highlands. “A quicksilver vision of collective being” (Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer, Screen Slate).
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Syria: Snapshots of History in the Making
Abounaddara
Syria, France, 2014
Les Blank Lecture
Wednesday, March 6 7 PM
Charif Kiwan, Stefania Pandolfo, and Soraya Tlatli in Conversation
This complex, multifaceted depiction of everyday life during revolution and war—made by those living through it—is assembled from videos made and released by the anonymous Syrian film collective Abounaddara.
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During Revolution
Maya Khoury
Syria, Sweden, 2019
Sunday, March 10 2 PM
Charif Kiwan, Stefania Pandolfo, and Anneka Lenssen in Conversation
Of the many filmed records of the Syrian Civil War, During Revolution is distinguished by its sense of chaos and uncertainty, as well as its candid depiction of a revolutionary movement bitterly splintering into competing factions.
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Films by Francisco Huichaqueo Pérez
Copresented by UC Berkeley’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS)
Wednesday, March 13 7 PM
Francisco Huichaqueo Pérez and Natalia Brizuela in Conversation
A program of four films by the Mapuche artist Francisco Huichaqueo Pérez demonstrating a variety of approaches to engage with, activate, and preserve Indigenous traditions and foster understanding.
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The Echo
Tatiana Huezo
Mexico, Germany, 2023
Wednesday, March 20 7 PM
Tatiana Huezo and Nicolás Pereda in Conversation
The cycles of life, seasons, and harvesting anchor this luminous look at multigenerational family life in a remote Puebla community. “An intimate, immersive portrait of a way of life” (Hollywood Reporter).
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R21: aka Restoring Solidarity
Mohanad Yaqubi
Palestine, Belgium, Qatar, 2022
Wednesday, April 3 7 PM
Introduced by Samera Esmeir
Drawing on a collection of twenty films safeguarded in the home of a Japanese scholar in Tokyo, Palestinian filmmaker and archivist Mohanad Yaqubi tells the story of Palestine’s struggle through the lens of international solidarity.
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Ch’ul be, Sacred Path
Humberto Gómez Pérez
Mexico, 2023
Wednesday, April 10 7 PM
Ch’ul be explores the ancient collective commitments, devotion, and music that sustain the cycle of life in the Tsotsil community of San Andrés Larráinzar, Chiapas. With Chick Strand’s luminous portrait of musician Anselmo Aguascalientes.
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Mueda, Memory and Massacre
Ruy Guerra
Mozambique, 1979
New Digital Restoration
Screen Slate Pick!
Wednesday, April 17 7 PM
Three films reveal the history of the Mozambique liberation struggle through different cinematic forms. Ruy Guerra documents a reenactment of the massacre that triggered the Mozambique War of Independence, a protest song and dance recalls the migration to work in mines in apartheid South Africa, and a recent fictional reconstruction examines rural land dispossession.

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Walking Archives: Thoughts on Mangroves, Schools, Round Houses, and Weaving
Wednesday, April 24 7 PM
Filipa César in Person
Three of Filipa César’s collaborative projects draw on memories and oral tradition: a militant school is re-created, Creole weaving is used to explore computer programming and globalization, and traditional round houses are compared to contemporary square ones.

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Documentary Voices 2024

February 7–April 24, 2024

Every year BAMPFA presents a selection of compelling contemporary and historical nonfiction films and innovative documentaries from around the world. This February we are thrilled to welcome back Santa Cruz–based documentary filmmaker Irene Lusztig—whose documentary Yours in Sisterhood screened in 2019—with a very different but equally impressive film. Richland explores the impact and legacy of the production of weapons-grade plutonium at the Hanford site in the eponymous Washington town. Documentary Voices 2024 intersects with our focus on the films of Black American cinematographer Skip Norman with a program of films made by members of the inaugural cohort of the DFFB Film School in Berlin. Photographed by Norman, the politically committed and formally inventive films range from the feminist perspective of Helke Sander’s Subjectitude to Harun Farocki’s anti–Vietnam War White Christmas to the rarely seen Berlin – 2. Juni 67, documenting the epoch-defining mass protest at which student Benno Ohnesorg was shot.

We are also delighted to screen a new restoration of Dick Fontaine’s long unavailable I Heard It Through the Grapevine in James Baldwin’s centenary year. The beautifully constructed chronicle of Baldwin’s 1980 journey through the American South combines his reflections and conversations with fellow survivors of the civil rights movement on their work in the 1960s and how much remained to be accomplished twenty years later. Finally, Mexico City–based artist Naomi Uman relocated to the Albanian highlands to make three sparks, a personal portrait of rural life, in which she shares her camera with the villagers, becoming a protagonist as well as an observer of daily life.

Documentary Voices continues this spring with more compelling contemporary and historical nonfiction films from around the world. Established to honor the memory of the great Berkeley-based documentarian, the annual Les Blank Lecture is presented this year by Charif Kiwan, representative of the anonymous Syrian video collective Abounaddara. From 2011 to 2017, the collective made more than three hundred short films as a corrective to mainstream depictions of Syrians during the Syrian Civil War. Kiwan presents Abounaddara’s 2014 compilation, Syria: Snapshots of History in the Making, and the collective’s 2019 film, During Revolution. The Palestinian documentary R21: aka Restoring Solidarity is compiled from a trove of twenty films chronicling the Palestinian struggle, held in the home of a Tokyo scholar, part of what director Mohanad Yaqubi refers to as an “imperfect archive of a revolution that never succeeded.” Aspects of rural existence in Mexico are explored in two recent films: Tatiana Huezo’s The Echo (El Eco), shot over eighteen months in the eponymous village, focuses on children, the seasons, and the work of caring for the land, animals, and one another shared across the generations. Following her extraordinary 2021 fiction film, Prayers for the Stolen (screening March 22), Huezo said, “I felt like returning to the language of the documentary, but most importantly, to find the extraordinary in the ordinary, in the smallest details in everyday life.” Ch’ul be, Sacred Path chronicles ritual tasks of devotion, care, and music performed by chosen members of the Tsotsil community of San Andrés Larráinzar, Chiapas. Copresented with the Center for Latin American Studies at UC Berkeley, Mapuche artist Francisco Huichaqueo Pérez presents videos exploring the landscape, history, culture, and worldview of his people. Filipa César presents a program of her work in conjunction with the series Tell No Lies: Decolonizing Cinema in Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique.

—Kate MacKay, Associate Film Curator

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This series is curated by Natalia Brizuela and Kate MacKay and is presented in conjunction with Brizuela’s UC Berkeley course Documentary Forms.

Charif Kiwan’s visit is made possible by the Les Blank Fund and the support of Stefania Pandolfo and Anneka Lenssen.

Thanks to the Center for Latin American Studies at UC Berkeley; Peter Kelly, Cinema Guild; Jacob Perlin; The Film Desk; and María Vera, Kino Rebelde, Valentina Bronzini, The Match Factory; Sami Said, Idioms Film; Nicolas Défossé, Terra Nostra Films; Brett Kashmere, Seth Mitter, Canyon Cinema.