| Details | A panel of filmmakers who are featured in our film series Alternate Realities: Science Fiction from Across Asia join film scholar Samirah Alkassim to talk about the exciting and thought-provoking new currents in independent science fiction filmmaking, from Southeast Asia to the Arab world. Panelists will include Sophia Al Maria, director of The Future was Desert Parts 1 & 2; Larissa Sansour, director of In the Future, They Ate from the Finest Porcelain and In Vitro; Shengze Zhu, director of Present.Perfect; and Trương Minh Quý, director of The Tree House. Register here: https://smithsonian.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_iT35b58-SlO5PNqTQX5OmQ
Panelist bios:
Samirah Alkassim (moderator) teaches film and video studies at George Mason University. Her publications include the coauthored book The Cinema of Muhammad Malas: Visions of a Syrian Auteur (2018) and chapters in Cinema of the Arab World: Contemporary Directions in Theory and Practice (2020), Refocus: The Films of Jocelyne Saab (forthcoming, 2021), and Gaza on Screen (forthcoming, 2021). She also coedits the Palgrave Studies in Arab Cinema.
Sophia Al Maria is an artist, writer, and filmmaker. She studied comparative literature at the American University in Cairo and aural and visual cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. For the past few years, she has been carrying out research around the concept of Gulf Futurism. Her primary interests are the isolation of individuals via technology and reactionary Islam, the corrosive elements of consumerism and industry, and the erasure of history and the blinding approach of a future no one is ready for. She explores these ideas with certain guidebooks and ideas including, but not limited to, Zizek’s Welcome to the Desert of the Real; As-Sufi’s Islamic Book of the Dead; and imagery from Islamic eschatology, post-humanism, and the global mythos of science fiction.
Larissa Sansour was born in 1973 in East Jerusalem, Palestine, and studied fine arts in London, New York, and Copenhagen. Central to her work are the dialectics between myth and historical narrative. In her recent works, she uses science fiction to address social and political issues. Working mainly with film, Sansour also produces installations, photos, and sculptures. Sansour’s work is shown in film festivals and museums worldwide. In 2019, she represented Denmark at the 58th Venice Biennale. She has shown her work at Tate Modern, MoMA, Centre Pompidou, and the Istanbul Biennial. Recent solo exhibitions include Copenhagen Contemporary in Denmark, Bluecoat in Liverpool, Bildmuseet in Umeå, and Dar El-Nimer in Beirut.
Soren Lind (b. 1970) is a Danish author, artist, director, and scriptwriter. With a background in philosophy, Lind has written books on mind, language, and understanding before turning to art, film, and fiction. He has published novels, short story collections, and several children’s books. Lind screens and exhibits his films at museums, galleries, and film festivals worldwide. His work was shown at the Danish Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale. Other recent venues and festivals include Copenhagen Contemporary (DK), MoMA (US), Barbican (UK), Nikolaj Kunsthal (DK), Berlinale (D), International Film Festival Rotterdam (NL), and BFI London Film Festival (UK).
Shengze Zhu is a filmmaker and producer from China now based in Chicago. She cofounded a production collective, Burn the Film, with Zhengfan Yang, that is dedicated to creating, producing, and supporting innovative moving-image work. Her feature debut, Out of Focus (2014, documentary), premiered at Cinéma du Réel in France; her second film, Another Year (2016, documentary), received the Best Film Award at Visions du Réel in Switzerland, the Grand Prize at RIDM Montreal International Documentary Festival, and was honored as one of the top ten films of the year in 2016 by 24 Images magazine. Her third film, Present.Perfect (2019, documentary), received the Tiger Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in the Netherlands, the Grand Prize at RIDM Montreal International Documentary Festival, and the Spotlight Award at the 2020 Cinema Eye Honors.
Trương Minh Quý was born in Buon Ma Thuot, a small city in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. His work draws on the landscape of his homeland, his childhood memories, and the historical context of Vietnam. He is an alumnus of the 2012 Asian Film Academy (Busan International Film Festival) and the 2016 Berlinale Talents (Berlin International Film Festival). His films have been selected for international film festivals and exhibitions such as Locarno, New York, Clermont-Ferrand, Oberhausen, Rotterdam, Busan, and Les Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin. He won the main Art Prize at the 20th Videobrasil (São Paulo) in 2017. His second feature film, The Tree House, premiered at the 72nd Locarno Film Festival and went on to screen at the 57th New York Film Festival, the Viennale, Festival des 3 Continents, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, CPH:DOX, the Göteborg Film Festival, and others. Images courtesy of Burn the Film and Larissa Sansour. |
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