"A Moon for my Father"
Screening and Q&A with filmmaker Mania Akbari
Co-sponsored by: Porter College, Film and Digital Media, The Humanities Institute, Center for Documentary Arts and Research, Center for the Middle East and North Africa
Mania Akbari collaborates with British sculptor Douglas White to coin a tender fusion of language, where a meeting of cinema and sculpture investigates the processes of physical and psychological destruction and renewal. Begun a matter of weeks after firt meeting, the film charts a deepening artistic and personal relationship exploring the nature of skin, family, death, water, desire and, throughout, a powerful will to form. Akbari looks into the connection between her body and the political history of Iran, investigating the relationship between her own physical traumas and the collective political memory of her birthplace. As she undergoes surgeries on a body decimated by cancer, remembrance and reconstruction provide a framework for investigating how bodies are traumatized, censored and politicized, and yet ultimately remain a site of possibility. We are honored to be the first US venue to host Mania Akbari with her new film.
CDAR POST-REALISM SEMINAR #19 - BODY POLITICS
Tues., Feb. 25 4:30pm-7:30pm, Communications 113 (Studio D)
CONTACT CDAR@UCSC.EDU TO REGISTER FOR SEMINAR
Our bodies live in their current contexts with their historic, scientific, genetic and social memories. Yet how do these memories take shape today in interactions with machines? Machines that are manufactured by our bodies and machines that simultaneously manufacture our bodies as well? When the human organs become centralized in confrontation with various situations, new political movements arise. The deepest part of humans’ bodies is the skin and the furthest part, the geopolitical borders. Contemporary bodies carry the deepest and the furthest at the same time. They socialize with their internal geopolitical borders.
MANIA AKBARI (b. Tehran, 1974) is an internationally acclaimed artist and filmmaker. Her provocotive, revolutionary and radical films were recently the subject of retrospectives at the BFI, London (2013), the DFI, Denmark (2014), Oldenburg international Film Festival, Germany (2014), Cyprus Film Festival (2014) and Nottingham Contemporary UK (2018). Her films have screened at festivals around the world and have received numerous awards. Akbari's latest film 'A Moon For My Father' made in collaboration with British artist Douglas White, premiered at CPH:DOX where it won the NEW:VISION Award 2019. Akbari was exiled from Iran and currently lives and works in London.