The Flaherty Presents: Opacity
9 Episodes
Each year the legendary Flaherty Film Seminar invites participants to reconsider their understanding of cinema through a rigorous program of thought-provoking, boundary-breaking works organized around a salient theme. Taking the notion of “Opacity”—defined as that which cannot be reduced by the dominant, supposedly “universal” Western gaze that shapes the film canon—as its starting point, this diverse and iridescent program curated by Janaína Oliveira brings together a chorus of voices from Brazil, Sudan, South Africa, and beyond in order to challenge viewers to look anew at the “opaque” singular experiences within moving-image art.
-
Africa, the Jungle, Drums and Revolution
Episode 1
Directed by Suliman Mohamed Ibrahim Elnour • 1979 • Soviet Union
Sudanese director Suliman Mohamed Ibrahim Elnour’s diploma film from the VGIK film school in Moscow explores representations of Africa in Soviet society.
-
11:14Episode 3
. . . After He Left
Episode 3
Directed by Athi-Patra Ruga • 2008 • South Africa
Clad in pink stilettos, fishnet stockings, and outré headgear, a mute figure wanders, alien-like, through the city.
-
15:25Episode 5
Public Service Announcement
Episode 5
Directed by Athi-Patra Ruga • 2014 • South Africa
A stunning cosmic kaleidoscope of fluorescent, pixelated nature imagery is set to a dryly satirical lesson on the totalitarian, matriarchal political structure of the fictional republic of Azania.
-
26:52Episode 6
Another Decade
Episode 6
Directed by Morgan Quaintance • 2018 • United Kingdom
ANOTHER DECADE begins with testimonies and statements made by artists and art historians during the 1994 Institute of International Visual Arts conference “Towards a New Internationalism” to reveal the lack of sociocultural or institutional c...
-
15:26Episode 7
Missing Time
Episode 7
Directed by Morgan Quaintance • 2019 • United Kingdom
Through a focus on alien abduction, Cold War history, and Britain’s colonial legacy, MISSING TIME considers the relationship between amnesia, concealed histories, state secrecy, and the constitution of the self.
-
44:52Episode 8
Dazed Flesh
Episode 8
Directed by Grace Passô and Ricardo Alves Jr. • 2019 • Brazil
Starring Grace Passô, Zora Santos, Dona JandiraA wandering voice is able to invade any matter—solid, liquid, or gas—and it decides for the first time to invade a woman’s body. From this experience it narrates what it feels and what i...
-
Republic
Episode 9
Directed by Grace Passô • 2020 • Brazil
Starring Grace PassôMade at home at the beginning of the 2020 quarantine in downtown São Paulo, Brazil, REPUBLIC reveals the necropolitics at play in a country in the midst of both a public health and political crisis.