General Events

Award-winning Palestinian artist and filmmaker Basma al-Sharif explores cyclical political histories and conflicts. In films and installations that move backward and forward in history, between place and non-place, she confronts the legacy of colonialism through satirical, immersive, and lyrical works.

Al-Sharif will present early and recent film works: Morgenkreis/Morning Circle (2025, 20:31 minutes), which follows a father and son in their intimate rituals as they prepare to start the day and head to kindergarten; Capital (2023, 19 minutes), which centers on the rise of fascism in Egypt by focusing on architecture to highlight the shift from a colonial past to neocolonial infrastructure; and Home Movies Gaza (2013, 24:10 minutes), which presents the Gaza Strip as a microcosm for the failure of civilization. The screenings will be followed by a conversation with Maryam Kashani.

In addition to this MillerComm event, al-Sharif's feature-length experimental film Ouroboros (2017) will be screened on Friday, April 10, 7pm, Knight Auditorium. This film is an homage to the Gaza Strip and to the possibility of hope beyond hopelessness. Ouroboros, the symbol of the snake eating its tail, is both end and beginning: death as regeneration. A 74-minute experimental narrative film that turns the destruction of Gaza into a story of heartbreak, Ouroboros asks what it means to be human when humanity has failed. Taking the form of a love story, the film’s central character is Diego Marcon, a man who embarks on a circular journey to shed his pain only to experience it, again and again. In the course of a single day, his travel fuses together Native American territories, the ancient Italian city of Matera, a castle in Brittany, and the ruins of the Gaza Strip into a single landscape. (Italian, English, and Chinook with English subtitles.)

Hosted by: Department of Asian American Studies, Mellon Minor Aesthetics Lab, and Department of Gender & Women's Studies