Doc Talk with Hira Nabi (Online) October 5th, 1pm

Two film: ALL THAT PERISHES AT THE EDGE OF LAND & EL RETORNO / THE RETURN 

“Hira Nabi’s camera magnificently captures the “ship breaking” industry of Pakistan, which employs the poorest of the poor to disassemble obsolete carrier vessels for scrap.“

Eric Althoff, Screen Comment

“A powerful commentary on the ocean as a key space of globalization and of the precarious lives defined by shifting economic parameters – one that deftly connects deindustrialization of the North and environmental degradation to the harsh realities experienced by labourers in the Global South.“

Emilia Terracciano, Frieze

ALL THAT PERISHES AT THE EDGE OF LAND (30 min.)

In this docu-fictional work, ‘Ocean Master’ a decommissioned container vessel is anthropomorphized, and enters into a dialogue with several workers at the Gadani yards. The conversation moves between dreams and desire, the environment, places that can be called home, their own physical vulnerabilities, and the structural violence embedded in the act of dismembering a ship at Gadani. As the workers recall the homes and families they left behind, the long work days mesh indistinguishably into one another, the desperation that they carry with them like shackles rises to the forefront, and they are forced to confront the realities of their work in which they are faced with death every day. How may they survive and look towards the future?

+ EL RETORNO / THE RETURN (12 min)

A taxi driver agrees to drive a stranger around a town the man has never visited. Their short journey gives the man a new destination. This film was made during the ‘Filming in Cuba with Abbas Kiarostami’ workshop in Jan-Feb 2016 organized by Black Factory Cinema and Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV (EICTV).

Hira Nabi works with images and text to tell stories of the everyday. Her practice is concerned with the environment, the often unseen, and a slow process of re-earthing: by which she intends to shift focus away from anthropocentric stories into a more interconnected and larger witnessing of the times we live in. She earned a BA in film and postcolonial studies from Hampshire College, and an MA in cinema and media studies from The New School. She lives and works in Lahore, Pakistan, where she is teaching at the Beaconhouse National University, and researching cinematic cultures, and botanical movements and plant migrations in South Asia.

Please join us for this online screening and Q&A, hosted and moderated by Amir Husak, Director of Documentary Studies and Assistant Professor in the School of Media Studies.