#5*Documentary and power dynamics & How To Tell A True Immigrant Story - in conversation with Aggie Ebrahimi Bazaz
09/22/20 • 59 min
Aggie Ebrahimi Bazaz is an award-winning, Iranian-American documentary filmmaker and educator with interests in diasporic identity, feminism, co-creative practices, and the interchange of form and content in documentary engagements. Her work aims to articulate documentary complicity in oppressive regimes while optimizing documentary power to undermine those regimes.
Aggie's first film, Inheritance (2012, 27 min), a poetic autobiography on the relationship between political and personal revolts, earned the Loni Ding Award for Social Issue Documentary at CAAMFest 2013 and the Best Short Film award at the 2015 Indie Grits Film Festival. In 2013, Bazaz was one of seven Iranian filmmakers invited by the Iran Heritage Foundation to write and direct one segment of a multi-vocal documentary about the first-ever U.S. tour of the Cylinder of Cyrus the Great.
Her most recent film, “How to Tell a True Immigrant Story” (2019, 13min) was the first-ever VR film to be programmed in the Pardi di Domani shorts competition at the Locarno International Film Festival. Aggie has been artist-in-residence at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Skidmore Storytellers Institute, and Interlochen Center for the Arts, and in 2016 was named a BAVC National Mediamaker Fellow. She earned a University Fellowship to pursue her M.F.A. in film and media arts from Temple University and holds a master’s degree in multicultural literature and women’s studies from the University of Georgia, where she served as a researcher for the Emmy Award-winning digital humanities project, the Civil Rights Digital Library. Aggie currently serves as Assistant Professor of filmmaking at Georgia State University and continues work on a long-term project embedded within a community of migratory families who live and work in California's Central Valley, as well as a multimedia project about family homes built around the world through remittances, Mi Casa My Home.
In today’s episode, we talk about art and activism, documentary as a way of processing and theorising our realities, how documentary and the way we tell stories can maintain power dynamics and How to Tell a True Immigrant Story, which is also the title of her last short film.
See Aggie’s work:
Website: https://aggiebazaz.com/
Connect with Aggie:
- Instagram @agg_star
- Facebook @Aggie Ebrahimi
Watch it the episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxHPzAzN0Ak&t=7s
Subscribe to the newsletter for more content: https://bit.ly/3k4NyvZ
Aggie Ebrahimi Bazaz is an award-winning, Iranian-American documentary filmmaker and educator with interests in diasporic identity, feminism, co-creative practices, and the interchange of form and content in documentary engagements. Her work aims to articulate documentary complicity in oppressive regimes while optimizing documentary power to undermine those regimes.
Aggie's first film, Inheritance (2012, 27 min), a poetic autobiography on the relationship between political and personal revolts, earned the Loni Ding Award for Social Issue Documentary at CAAMFest 2013 and the Best Short Film award at the 2015 Indie Grits Film Festival. In 2013, Bazaz was one of seven Iranian filmmakers invited by the Iran Heritage Foundation to write and direct one segment of a multi-vocal documentary about the first-ever U.S. tour of the Cylinder of Cyrus the Great.
Her most recent film, “How to Tell a True Immigrant Story” (2019, 13min) was the first-ever VR film to be programmed in the Pardi di Domani shorts competition at the Locarno International Film Festival. Aggie has been artist-in-residence at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Skidmore Storytellers Institute, and Interlochen Center for the Arts, and in 2016 was named a BAVC National Mediamaker Fellow. She earned a University Fellowship to pursue her M.F.A. in film and media arts from Temple University and holds a master’s degree in multicultural literature and women’s studies from the University of Georgia, where she served as a researcher for the Emmy Award-winning digital humanities project, the Civil Rights Digital Library. Aggie currently serves as Assistant Professor of filmmaking at Georgia State University and continues work on a long-term project embedded within a community of migratory families who live and work in California's Central Valley, as well as a multimedia project about family homes built around the world through remittances, Mi Casa My Home.
In today’s episode, we talk about art and activism, documentary as a way of processing and theorising our realities, how documentary and the way we tell stories can maintain power dynamics and How to Tell a True Immigrant Story, which is also the title of her last short film.
See Aggie’s work:
Website: https://aggiebazaz.com/
Connect with Aggie:
- Instagram @agg_star
- Facebook @Aggie Ebrahimi
Watch it the episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxHPzAzN0Ak&t=7s
Subscribe to the newsletter for more content: https://bit.ly/3k4NyvZ
Previous Episode
#4 *Navigating between Journalism and Documentary & Getting work distributed on prominent channels - In conversation with Monica Wise Robles
Monica Wise Robles (Director/Producer/DP) is a Colombian-American documentary filmmaker and video journalist based in Mexico City. Her work focuses on intimate stories of resistance across borders to highlight feminist, LGBTQ, migrant, and indigenous narratives. Monica’s work can be seen in the Guardian, the Intercept, the Atlantic, Washington Post, AJ+, PBS and the BBC, among other outlets. Her first short documentary Lupita premiered online with the Ambulante festival in Mexico, and internationally in the Sheffield Doc/Fest 2020 programme. It will soon launch online on the Guardian Documentaries online channel. Monica worked on Pamela Yates’ 500 Years, a feature documentary chronicling indigenous resistance in Guatemala which premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Monica was also a producer and cinematographer on The New Deciders, a 2016 PBS election special with journalist Maria Hinojosa. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, she has also produced work from Haiti, Cuba, Costa Rica, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala and El Salvador. For the past two years, she has been directing Niñas, another documentary exposing state human rights abuses in Guatemala through the eyes of female survivors seeking justice. Monica is an International Women’s Media Foundation Adelante fellow, a Ford Foundation and Sundance Institute grantee, a UC Berkeley Investigative Reporting Program Associate, and was selected for Take The Lead’s 2018 #50WomenCan program for women working to change the gender gap in the media industry. She is a member of the Brown Girls Doc Mafia and the Video Consortium México. Monica also runs a virtual coffee session for filmmakers wanting to get into video journalism in the region or just looking for tips.
Today we’re talking about getting work distributed in prominent channels, the importance of building networks and navigating the intersection of journalism and filmmaking.
See Monica’s work:
Website: http://monicawiserobles.com/
Connect with Monica:
Instagram @monicawiserobles
Watch this episode here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCctioeuk_CmuiPC25RkB76g?
Subscribe to the newsletter for more content: https://bit.ly/3k4NyvZ
Next Episode
#6 Making an award-winning documentary & dealing with film censorship - In conversation with Sam Soko
Sam Soko is a director and producer based in Nairobi Kenya. His work on sociopolitical projects in music and film has allowed him to connect and work with artists around the world. He is co-founder of LBx Africa, a Kenyan production company that produced the 2018 Academy Award–nominated short fiction film Watu Wote.
The film Softie is his first feature documentary project and focuses on activism in Kenya. Working on this film strengthened his belief to continue to expose elements of humanity through narratives that dare to defy the status quo and indeed ourselves.
Softie made its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival 2020 where it won the Special Jury Award for editing. It was the Opening night film at Hot Docs and took Best documentary at the Durban International Film Festival in September 2020.
In today’s episode we talk about the unexpected journey of making his award-winning documentary Softie, dealing with film censorship in a politically tense climate, the renaissance of documentary in East Africa, and how collaborations enrichen the experience of making a film and telling a story.
See Soko’s work:
https://www.softiethefilm.com/
Connect with Soko:
- Instagram @soko_sam
- Facebook @Soko Sam
Watch the episode here: http://bit.ly/sunyoutube
Subscribe to the newsletter for more content: https://bit.ly/3k4NyvZ
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