Documentary Voices 2022

January 26–April 20, 2022

Our annual series features an international array of recent and historical documentaries and nonfiction films.

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The Washing Society
Phases of Matter
Collective
The Two Sights

Upcoming
Films
Upcoming
Events
Selected
Objects
Past
Films
Past
Events

Past Films

Collective
- Wednesday, April 20 7 PM
Alexander Nanau
Romania, Luxembourg, 2019
A shattering exposé of systemic corruption, this documentary about the aftermath of a Bucharest nightclub fire “doesn’t just open your eyes but tears you apart by exposing a moral rift with resonance far beyond the film’s home country” (Variety).

Cătălin Tolontan and David Barstow in Conversation
The Vulnerable Media Lab: ecologies, economies, and materialities
- Thursday, April 14 5 PM
Free Admission!
Susan Lord will introduce a program of Sara Gómez’s films, preserved by the Vulnerable Media Lab, on Wednesday, April 13.

Susan Lord presents a lecture on the practices of the Vulnerable Media Lab, which develops methods and processes to ensure culturally diverse “born digital” media history is preserved and made available according to culturally specific and ethically driven forms of access.

Lecture by Susan Lord
The Short Documentary Films of Sara Gómez
- Wednesday, April 13 7 PM
New Restorations
Susan Lord will give a free lecture on the practices of the Vulnerable Media Lab Thursday, April 14.

Gómez was one of the most inventive filmmakers of postrevolutionary Cuban cinema. Her recently restored films look at the complexities of the Caribbean island’s social, political, and economic transformation.

Introduced by Susan Lord
The Washing Society
- Wednesday, April 6 7 PM
Lizzie Olesker, Lynne Sachs
United States, 2018
Olesker and Sachs fold the history of labor and immigration into this intimate chronicle of the disappearing public space of the neighborhood laundromat. With Sachs’s And Then We Marched and E•pis•to•lar•y: Letter to Jean Vigo.

Les Blank Lecture by Lynne Sachs
Mr. Bachmann and His Class
- Wednesday, March 16 7 PM
Maria Speth
Germany, 2021
A German schoolteacher welcomes a class of students from twelve different nations in this “affectionate and inspiring portrait of an affectionate and inspiring man” (Variety).
Chinese Portrait
- Wednesday, March 9 7 PM
Wang Xiaoshuai
China, 2018
Roughly sixty carefully composed shots of citizens and their environments, recorded over ten years across China, comprise this formal masterpiece, a photo album of an entire nation’s decade. From the director of Beijing Bicycle.

Introduced by Andrew F. Jones
In Comparison
- Wednesday, March 2 7 PM
Harun Farocki
Germany, Austria, 2009
Farocki’s In Comparison considers the brick, that foundational unit of construction, as object, metaphor, and product of labor. With Domietta Torlasco’s Garfield Park, USA and Deniz Tortum and Kathryn Hamilton’s Our Ark, two short essay films.

Domietta Torlasco in Person
Phases of Matter
- Wednesday, February 23 7 PM
Deniz Tortum
Turkey, 2020
“A human, curious look at a place where life and death, levity and severity, poetry and confrontation go side by side,” Phases of Matter presents the Istanbul hospital where Deniz Tortum’s father worked for thirty years (Rotterdam International Film Festival).

Ernst Karel in Person
The Two Sights
- Wednesday, February 16 7 PM
Joshua Bonnetta
Canada, United Kingdom, 2020
In an “eerie and hypnotic” experimental evocation of the gift of second sight, Joshua Bonnetta infused the landscape of Scotland’s Outer Hebrides with otherworldly tales and meanings (Justine Smith, POV).
Surname Viet Given Name Nam
- Wednesday, February 9 7 PM
Trinh T. Minh-ha
United States, 1989
BAMPFA Preservation

The history of modern Vietnam and the struggles of its women provide the foundation for this “keenly intelligent, sensuously multilayered” documentary (Stuart Klawans, The Nation). Director Trinh T. Minh-ha gives the fifth Les Blank Lecture prior to the screening.

Lecture by Trinh T. Minh-ha
499
- Wednesday, February 2 7 PM
Rodrigo Reyes
Mexico, 2021
In this “truly brilliant accomplishment of unconventional storytelling” (Carlos Aguilar), a conquistador inexplicably finds himself in Mexico, 499 years after conquering Tenochtitlán with Hernán Cortez’s army in 1521. He retraces their original journey across Mexico, a reluctant witness to the ongoing legacy of Spanish conquest.

Rodrigo Reyes in Person
Prism
- Wednesday, January 26 7 PM
Rosine Mbakam, Eléonore Yameogo, An van. Dienderen
Belgium, 2021
A prismatic inquiry into how skin color is seen on screen, this provocative essay film asks whether technology consciously or unconsciously orients itself to depicting white skin as the norm.

Documentary Voices 2022

January 26–April 20, 2022

Our annual series features an international array of recent and historical documentaries and nonfiction films. We open with two powerful examinations of racism: a collaborative essay film that examines how cinema represents skin color on screen, and a hybrid exploration of the legacy of the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Trinh T. Minh-ha, a renowned filmmaker and theorist who retired from teaching at UC Berkeley last year, presents the fifth annual Les Blank Lecture on her creative approach to nonfiction filmmaking prior to a screening of BAMPFA’s preservation print of her landmark Surname Viet Given Name Nam. Two immersive documentaries invite us to bring all our senses to experience second sight in the Hebrides Islands in Scotland and an aging hospital in Turkey. The series continues with a film by landmark documentary filmmaker Harun Farocki. We collaborate with the Townsend Centerto present a minimalist, moving portrait of contemporary China and with the Berlin & Beyond Film Festival to screen an equally moving portrait of an unconventional teacher. Closing out the series, filmmaker Lynne Sachs elaborates on her creative process for the sixth Les Blank Lecture, Domietta Torlasco screens her new short video essay, Susan Lord presents the work of Afro-Cuban filmmaker Sara Gómez in conjunction with her new book, and journalist Cătălin Tolontan discusses Collective, which chronicles his exposé of Romanian corruption.

Less

This series is organized by Deniz Göktürk and Kathy Geritz and presented in conjunction with Göktürk’s UC Berkeley course on documentary film. Trinh’s presentation of the Les Blank Lecture is made possible with support from the Les Blank Fund; the evening is cosponsored by the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies. Lynne Sachs’s presentation of the Les Blank Lecture is made possible with support from the Les Blank Fund. Mr. Bachmann and His Class is presented as part of 26th Berlin & Beyond Film Festival, with thanks to Sophoan Sorn and community outreach partner the UC Berkeley Department of German; for more information, see berlinbeyond.com.

The screening of new restorations of Sara Gómez’s short documentaries, curated by Lázaro González, is the first project of the UC Berkeley graduate course in film curating taught by BAMPFA curator Kathy Geritz. The screening of Collective and presentation by Cătălin Tolontan were organized by Alina Predescu, a PhD candidate in the UC Berkeley Department of Film & Media.