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Center for Documentary Arts and Research: Adam and Zack Khalil

Mon, Apr 9, 2018, 7:00 pm
Location: 
Communications Building, Room 150 (Studio C)

TWO NIGHTS!!  INATTE / SE/ on Monday, April 9th and ANTI-ETHNOGRAPHY on Tuesday, April 10th

INAATE / SE/
[it shines a certain way.  to a certain place/it flies.  falls./]

Monday, April 9th - 7:00pm in Communications 150 (Studio C)

History is written by the victors, but this film reminds us that the history of the oppressed can still be saved from being extinguished.  Native American video artists Adam and Zack Khalil here reclaim the narrative of the Ojibway of Saulte Ste. Marie, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, from the archives and museums that woud confine it to the past.  Using personal interviews, animated drawings, performance, and provocative intercutting, the Khalil brothers feature debut makes a bold case for th Ojibway people to be their own storytellers - while seeking a cure for the damage inflicted by colonization - in a spiritual reconnection with tradition.  

ANTI-ETHNOGRAPHY

Anti-Ethnography is a selection of video works which examines the violence inherent in the ethnographic impulse, and unveils the absurd fetishism underpinning the discipline.  For indigenous peoples the camera is a dangerous weapon, one that has been weilded against us since the device's inception.  Anthopology's obsession with preserving images of our "vanishing" cultures has long been a tool used to colonize and oppress indigenous peoples. 

Tuesday, April 10th - Time and Location TBA

Bio: Adam Khalil and Zack Khalil (Ojibway) are filmmakers and artists from Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan and currently based in Brooklyn, New York.  Their work subverts traditional forms of ethnography through humor, transgression, and innovative documentary practice.  Their films and installations have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Sundance, Walker Arts Center, e-flux, Microscope Gallery (New York), Spektrum (Berlin), Trailer Gallery (Sweden), and Carnival of eCreativity (Bombay).  Both graduated from the Film and Electronic Arts program at Bard College, are UnionDocs Collaborative Fellows, Gates Millenium Scholars, 2017 Sundance Indigenous Opportunity Fellows and 2018 Sundance Art of Non Fiction grant recipients.