We continue the film and video program with a film screening and a conversation with the artist and filmmaker Tara Najd Ahmadi. Najd Ahmadi’s works focus on untold, marginalized stories that often reach us through informal oral histories. In this space, she explores how thinking subjects move against their marginality and articulate their hopes, frustrations, and desire to resist. The program will feature five short experimental films made between 2016 and 2023, followed by a conversation with the artist.

Surfacing Images (2023) is a short experimental documentary about film preservation and the destiny of images that are left on their own. From the works of Dušan Makavejev and Bojana Marijan to the videos of the Iranian revolution and women’s uprising, this film portrays the irresistible urge of images to resurface.

My Sleepless Friends (2023) is a short experimental documentary about insomnia as a common sociopolitical issue of the 21st century. It juxtaposes intimate conversations with every night-life scenes to create a wider portrait of certain cracks in our times through which general unrest and unease are revealed. 

An Art Historian’s Recipe (2022) is a short film homage to Douglas Crimp (1944-2019). In the 1970s, Crimp attempted to publish a Moroccan cookbook in New York City, but his project failed, and the book was never published. The film’s narration consists of excerpts from Crimp’s memoir Before Pictures. The footage is a collage of 16mm films shot between 2017 and 2021, including the footage of Crimp preparing a tagine dish (from his unpublished cookbook) with his students at the University of Rochester.

A Week with Azar (2018) is a short documentary film based on a true story of Azar, an Iranian computer engineer living in the United States, who in the winter of 2017 failed to see her ill sister in Isfahan (Iran) for the last time because of the Executive Order 13769, commonly known as the travel ban. According to this ban, the nationals of seven countries, including Iran, could not enter the USA. 

Productive Frustration (2016) investigates an artist’s ongoing, everyday struggle – both conscious and subconscious – to remain creatively productive in an exasperating atmosphere. Combining various media, textures, and modes of expression, such as stopmotion animation, video, 16mm film, still images, and voiceovers, the film juxtaposes thoughts and memories from the past, the present, and a possible future.

Tara Najd Ahmadi is an artist, filmmaker and scholar born in Teheran, living in Vienna. She received her Ph.D. in Visual and Cultural Studies from the University of Rochester (New York). Besides non-fiction cinematic work, she is also working as educator and curator of film and video. Her film collection is preserved at the Slovenian Cinematheque. Solo screenings of her work have taken place at the Anthology Film Archives (NYC), Bristol Experimental Expanded Film, Belgrade’s Academic Film Center, and Vienna’s Depot: Kunst und Diskussion, among other venues. Her films have been presented at various festival including Dokufest Prizren and Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen. 

The screening is a part of the film and video program „Remember Freedom: Images of Resistance“. The programme will be held in English.

Many thanks to Kino Kinoteka. 

The program is supported by:
Office for Culture and Civil Society of the City of Zagreb
Kultura Nova Foundation
Croatian Audiovisual Centre (HAVC)