Apat

20236 min13+

Synopsis

In relation to colonization and the postcolonial condition, Apat integrates the filmmaker’s research into extinction and its results: natural disasters, cultural damage, and the eradication of memory. Combining found footage with images from Karimi’s family archive, Apat tells of the artist’s personal history—a history that is yet to be reclaimed. Karimi’s search for her own narrative mirrors the journey towards independence and coming-of-age of a people and a region.

Credits

Director

Nazira Karimi

Born in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, Nazira Karimi is an artist and filmmaker. She is a part of the DAVRA collective and a founding member of the artist collective MATA. Currently based in Vienna, Austria, Karimi is pursuing her Magistra’s degree in Arts and Cultural Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts. Prior to that, Karimi studied Stage Design and Painting at the Almaty College of Applied Arts in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Details

Country of ProductionTajikistan, Kazakhstan
Spoken LanguagesKazakh
SubtitleEnglish
ColorColor

Festival records

Edition | Program

2023Monographs
sinking, shifting, stirring
Monographs is a series of video and text essays on Asian cinema commissioned by the Asian Film Archive (AFA). Conceived during the outbreak of COVID-19 when physical screenings were disrupted, Monographs offers a critical platform for writers and thinkers to discourse upon the moving image beyond the walls of the cinema. The second edition of Monographs consists of 13 commissioned works–7 video essays and 6 written essays–produced in consultation with filmmaker/editor Daniel Hui and researcher/curator Matthew Barrington.
Responding to changing geological and sociopolitical landscapes, Monographs 2023: sinking, shifting, stirring interrogates how the environment, climate, and human and nonhuman relationships might be reimagined. Evoking cycles of geological transformation, the anthology explores how cinematic representations of the environment move through cycles of dissolution, transformation, and rebirth.
From meditations on a glacial Himalayan town to speculative eco-fictions, the essays uncover how a wide stratum of interpersonal, historical and cultural meanings are grafted onto the multitudinous landscapes of Asia. Through the filmic medium including but not limited to contemporary vlogs, video art, travelogs, silent cinema, and state sponsored productions, Monographs 2023 explores the tensions between form and formlessness, sound and silence; as landscapes are continually sinking, shifting, stirring.
Read the Monographs 2023 essays here.

— Natalie Khoo
Programmer

Under the same program: Monographs

Letter to T: in a nuclearity, we are connected
202321 min17+
Zimu Zhang
Swimming, Dancing
20238 minPG
Ian Wang
mmm
20237 min13+
Chiemi Shimada
In the Forest One Thing Can Look Like Another
202316 min17+
Priyanka Chhabra