Documentary Voices 2025
Documentary Voices 2025
February 5–April 30, 2025
BAMPFA’s annual selection of compelling nonfiction films includes the award-winning Palestinian/Israeli documentary No Other Land, as well as films by Dana Claxton, Kevin Jerome Everson, Asmae El Moudir, and Ibrahim Nash’at. With Sergei Loznitsa, Rick Prelinger, Jenni Olson, Elizabeth Ai, Pinar Öğrenci, and Sylvain George in person.
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Sylvain George: Obscure Night—Goodbye Here, Anywhere, 2023
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Michael Dweck, Gregory Kershaw: Gaucho, Gaucho, 2024
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Kevin Jerome Everson: Ten Five in the Grass, 2012
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Jenni Olson: The Royal Road, 2015
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Elizabeth Ai: New Wave, 2024
- Upcoming
Films - Past
Films - Past
Events
Past Films
Mosse Lecture: Sergei Loznitsa
Free Admission
Wednesday, February 5 7:00 PMSergei Loznitsa and Deniz Göktürk in ConversationView DetailsFactory showcases Sergei Loznitsa’s approach to nonfiction, working with original camerawork and mining the archives for imagery, with the annual Mosse Lecture.
No Other Land
Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor
Palestine, Norway, 2024Wednesday, February 12 7:00 PMIntroduced by Ussama MakdisiView DetailsMade over five years by a collective of Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers, No Other Land chronicles the attempts of the inhabitants of Palestinian villages in the West Bank to resist the destruction of their homes and expropriation of their land by the Israeli military.
No Other Land
Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor
Palestine, Norway, 2024Friday, February 14 4:00 PMView DetailsMade over five years by a collective of Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers, No Other Land chronicles the attempts of the inhabitants of Palestinian villages in the West Bank to resist the destruction of their homes and expropriation of their land by the Israeli military.
I Am Ishi: The Performance Art Film
Dana Claxton
Canada, 2023Wednesday, February 19 7:00 PMIntroduced by Dmitri BrownView DetailsDrawing from and expanding on James Luna’s ISHI: The Archive Performance, Dana Claxton and members of the Ishi Collective interrogate the legacy of colonial museum practices through the tragic story of the last known survivor of the Yahi people.
CANCELED: Gaucho Gaucho
Michael Dweck, Gregory Kershaw
United States, Argentina, 2024Wednesday, February 26 7:00 PMIntroduction by Leila WeefurView DetailsThese 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.
Rick Prelinger’s Lost Landscapes
Wednesday, March 5 7:00 PMLes Blank Lecture: Rick PrelingerView DetailsThe annual Les Blank Lecture is presented by archivist, filmmaker, educator, and curator Rick Prelinger. Prelinger will present excerpts from his Lost Landscapes compilations and discuss the importance of archiving home movies and industrial, educational, and ephemeral films.
Hollywoodgate
Ibrahim Nash’at
United States, Germany, 2023Wednesday, March 12 7:00 PMIntroduced by Jason Spingarn-KoffView DetailsUnprecedented and audacious, director Ibrahim Nash’at’s Hollywoodgate spends a year inside Afghanistan following the Taliban as they take possession of the cache of weapons America left behind—and transform from a fundamentalist militia into a heavily armed military regime.
The Mother of All Lies
Asmae El Moudir
Morocco, 2024Wednesday, March 19 7:00 PMIntroduced by Paola BacchettaView Details“The delicate mix of handmade replicas and oral testimony brilliantly evokes the personal and collective trauma that stem from Morocco’s ‘Years of Lead’—a period of state brutality under Hassan II’s dictatorial rule” (Phuong Le, Guardian).
The Royal Road
Jenni Olson
United States, 2015Wednesday, April 2 7:00 PMJenni Olson in PersonView DetailsA cinematic essay in defense of remembering, a primer on Junipero Serra’s Spanish colonization of California and the Mexican–American War, alongside intimate reflections on nostalgia, the pursuit of unavailable women, butch identity, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Screens with 575 Castro St., a haunting remembrance of Harvey Milk.
New Wave
Elizabeth Ai
United States, 2024Copresented by the UC Berkeley Center for Southeast Asia Studies
Wednesday, April 9 7:00 PMElizabeth Ai and Peter Zinoman in ConversationView DetailsElizabeth Ai explores the significance of electronic New Wave music and punk/goth aesthetics for a generation of Vietnamese American youth coming of age in the 1980s and grappling with the weight of their parents’ unspoken traumas.
The Avalanche
Pinar Öğrenci
Germany, Turkey, 2022Free for UC Berkeley students, staff, and faculty
Mosse Lecture by Pinar Öğrenci on tracing histories of displacement in constellation
In cooperation with the symposium Media and Migration in a Digital AgeWednesday, April 16 7:00 PMPinar Öğrenci and Minoo Moallem in ConversationView DetailsPinar Öğrenci explores the complex and brutal history and foreboding geography of her father’s home, Müküs, within the mountainous region in southern Van, on Turkey’s border with Iran.
Two Films by Pinar Öğrenci
Free for UC Berkeley students, staff, and faculty
Friday, April 18 2:30 PMPinar Öğrenci and Christine Philliou in ConversationView DetailsPinar Öğrenci presents two documentaries exploring the effects of nationalism, war, and migration, one through the history of lokum (Turkish delight) and the other chronicling the living conditions of Turkish guest workers in Kreuzberg, Berlin.
Obscure Night—Goodbye Here, Anywhere
Sylvain George
France, Switzerland, 2023Wednesday, April 30 7:00 PMSylvain George and Debarati Sanyal in Conversation; Introduced by Jonathan MackrisView DetailsIn the Spanish enclave of Melilla, Morocco, a group of youths try to get to Europe. Obscure Night—Goodbye Here, Anywhere focuses on a reality the Western world would rather not see, dissident dreams that transcend geographical boundaries.