Program 1: Remains to Be Seen

Please note: This program’s limited rental window at NYFF58 has ended. Explore the latest new releases and restorations in our Virtual Cinema.

Apparition
Ismaïl Bahri, 2019, Tunisia/France, 3m
Held up to the light and explored by the artist’s hands, an archival photograph taken on Tunisia’s day of independence in 1956 becomes the site of a tactile exploration of history, enacting a process through which impressions of the past, once hidden, reappear and fade.

A Revolt Without Images
Pilar Monsell, 2020, Spain, 14m
Tracing the history of a women-led uprising in the Spanish city of Córdoba in 1652, Pilar Monsell’s film resurrects an event for which there exist neither names nor faces nor images. From empty historic ruins to a gallery of women’s portraits and the museumgoers who gaze upon them, the film ponders the question of how to rematerialize a history of resistance in the present—a history continually under threat of erasure.

UNTITLED SEQUENCE OF GAPS
Vika Kirchenbauer, 2020, Germany, 13m
Through an assemblage of vignettes employing various imaging techniques, from infrared to home video fragments, Vika Kirchenbauer’s personal essay film explores that which remains outside the realm of the visible. Meditating on trauma-induced memory loss—in collective and public histories, as well as individual experiences of violence—UNTITLED SEQUENCE OF GAPS draws nuanced and lyrical connections between the elusive nature of the color spectrum and that of subjective trauma.

This Day Won’t Last
Mouaad el Salem, 2020, Tunisia/Belgium, 25m
A refracted self-portrait in the form of a video diary, This Day Won’t Last veers from nightmare to fantasy to the banalities of everyday life, as the artist finds himself caught between an unstable present—the status of queer people in post-revolutionary Tunisia, his complicated relationship with his family—and an uncertain future.

Hidden
Jafar Panahi, 2020, France, 18m
A sly mini-remake of his last feature, 3 Faces (NYFF57), Jafar Panahi’s new short film follows the filmmaker, his daughter, and her theater-producer friend to a remote Kurdish village to visit a woman, a preternaturally gifted singer, whose traditional family refuses to allow her to perform publicly. What they find there is both beautifully surprising and richly allegorical: a secret to be kept hidden that is nevertheless yearning to break free.

Watch the Q&A below.