What's a Human Anyway? Films from the Global Lens Collection

November 11–December 21, 2017

From Tajikistan to Uruguay, Mali to Vietnam, these films offer perspectives on human experience that are both distinctly local and universal.

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  • Dam Street

  • Whisky

  • Buffalo Boy

  • Kabala

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

Past Films

  • What's a Human Anyway?

    • Thursday, December 21 7 PM
    Reha Erdem
    Turkey, 2004

    BAMPFA Collection

    Reha Erdem’s innovative group portrait of the inhabitants of an apartment building in Istanbul serves as a comic exploration of what it means to be human.

  • Dam Street

    • Friday, December 15 4 PM
    Li Yu
    China, 2005

    BAMPFA Collection

    An unexpected pregnancy transforms the life of a teenage girl in a small riverside town, who still struggles to live down her past ten years later, in Li Yu’s elegantly composed Chinese drama.

  • In the Battlefields

    • Sunday, December 10 7 PM
    Danielle Arbid
    Lebanon, 2004

    BAMPFA Collection

    A young girl tries to befriend her aunt’s teenage maid in this keenly observed coming-of-age tale from Lebanon, set in war-torn 1980s Beirut.

  • Kabala

    • Thursday, December 7 7 PM
    Assane Kouyaté
    Mali, 2002

    BAMPFA Collection

    Magic spells lend a helping hand in this poetic feature about a young man’s troubled relationship with his native village in Mali.

  • Whisky

    • Sunday, November 19 5 PM
    Juan Pablo Rebella, Pablo Stoll
    Uruguay, 2004

    BAMPFA Collection

    From Uruguay, a deadpan comedy about minor subterfuge and awkward loyalties, “the story of ordinary life artfully and touchingly told” (New York Times). “Swigs from the same bottle as Aki Kaurismäki” (Village Voice).

  • Buffalo Boy

    • Saturday, November 18 5:30 PM
    Nguyen-Vo Nghiem-Minh
    Vietnam, 2004

    BAMPFA Collection

    This Vietnamese coming-of-age story about a boy and his buffalo, set in French colonial Indochina circa 1940, won the special prize from the Youth Jury at the Locarno Film Festival.

  • Angel on the Right

    • Saturday, November 11 8 PM
    Jamshed Usmonov
    Tajikistan, 2002

    BAMPFA Collection

    This affecting dark comedy depicts the travails of a tough ex-con (and former projectionist) who returns to his small village in Tajikistan.