Series Site
April 16–18, 2025
Presented in conjunction with the symposium Media and Migration in a Digital Age, and the Mosse Lecture series, these three programs represent innovative cinematic approaches to depicting the histories, causes, and effects of global migration while serving as creative counterpoints to negative mass media depictions of migrant communities. The first program, curated by Allyson Unzicker, consists of short films and videos from the United States, United Kingdom, Turkey/Lebanon, Philippines, and Palestine. These works use a range of approaches—poetic, essayistic, observational, layered collage—to explore, as Unzicker writes, “the conflicts of war, climate change, and the colonial legacies that continue to force the movement of people and ideas across national borders.”
The other two programs in the series focus on the films of Pinar Öğrenci, who will present her films in person. Öğrenci is a Turkish German artist based in Berlin whose video and installation works reflect on—as described by documenta fifteen—“the intersections of social, political, and architectural research, human stories, everyday practices, music and literature” as they relate to shifting demographics caused by state and ethnic violence, economics, and cultural pressures. Her documentary The Avalanche deals with the cosmopolitan history of the mountainous region of Van on Turkey’s border with Iran. Her two other films explore the effects of nationalism, war, and migration—one through the history of lokum (Turkish delight) and the other by chronicling the living conditions of Turkish guest workers in Kreuzberg, Berlin.
—Kate MacKay, Associate Film Curator