Documentary Voices

February 1–April 12, 2023

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

Read full description

Karrabing Film Collective: Day in the Life
Marwa Arsanios: Who Is Afraid of Ideology? Part 2
Yãmĩyhex, The Woman-Spirit
Fad’jal
Eami
And when I die, I won’t stay dead
Expedition Content
Mamá

Upcoming
Films
Upcoming
Events
Selected
Objects
Past
Films
Past
Events

Upcoming Films

Yãmĩyhex, The Woman-Spirit
Sueli Maxakali, Isael Maxakali
Brazil, 2019
- Wednesday, February 15 7 PM
Gustavo Caboco in Person; Sueli Maxakali, Isael Maxakali, Carolina Canguçu, Roberto Romero, and Natalia Brizuela in Prerecorded Conversation
Yãmĩyhex, The Woman-Spirit is “a film haunted by a myth, inhabited by the careful construction of rituals and celebration, moved by the force of a spiritual bond with every manifestation of life” (Sheffield DocFest).
View Details
Buy Tickets
Fad’jal
Safi Faye
Senegal, 1979
- Wednesday, February 22 7 PM
In Fad’jal, the groundbreaking Senegalese-French filmmaker and ethnologist Safi Faye investigates traditions of storytelling through a beautiful portrait of her ancestral farming village.
View Details
Buy Tickets
Short Films by Alice Diop: Towards Tenderness
Alice Diop
France, 2016
- Wednesday, March 1 7 PM
Born in France to Senegalese parents, Alice Diop (Saint Omer) brings a unique perspective to migrant and Black diaspora experience. Influenced by Jean Rouch and Frederick Wiseman, she makes films that bring those on the periphery to the center.
View Details
Buy Tickets
Out of the Vault: Dead Birds
Robert Gardner
United States, 1964
- Sunday, March 5 5 PM
Introduced by Ernst Karel
One of the most influential ethnographic films of the 1960s, Dead Birds is director Robert Gardner’s interpretation of life among the Dani people of West Papua. With shorts from his Baliem Valley 1961 series.
View Details
Buy Tickets
Expedition Content
Ernst Karel, Veronika Kusumaryati
United States, 2020
- Wednesday, March 8 7 PM
Ernst Karel in Person
This fascinating sonic ethnography, which draws on the audio archive from Robert Gardner’s 1961 expedition to West Papua, is “a mind-expanding inquiry on anthropology” (Manohla Dargis, New York Times).
View Details
Buy Tickets
Mamá
Xun Sero
Mexico, 2022
- Wednesday, March 15 7 PM
Xun Sero and Natalia Brizuela in Livestream Conversation
Mexican Tzotzil filmmaker Xun Sero’s Mamá is “an extraordinarily sensitive first film where both mother and son open a dialogue in an attempt at self-discovery” (HotDocs).
View Details
Buy Tickets
And when I die, I won’t stay dead
Billy Woodberry
United States, Portugal, 2015
- Wednesday, March 22 7 PM
Les Blank Lecture by Billy Woodberry
Billy Woodberry’s “daring and accomplished documentary” (New Yorker) of Bob Kaufman, one of the most overlooked of the Beat Generation artists, is lovingly assembled from archival footage, documents, and interviews. With an homage to Ousmane Sembène’s Black Docker.
View Details
Buy Tickets
Eami
Paz Encina
Paraguay, 2022
Cosponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies
- Wednesday, April 5 7 PM
Paz Encina in Person
“A hazy daydream of a film,” Eami is “equal parts nature doc and choral poem, an experimental memory essay that’s also an urgent elegy for a people, a forest, a world” (Variety). With Paz Encina’s sound piece Traéme Agua, Traéme Miel.
View Details
Buy Tickets
A Night of Knowing Nothing
Payal Kapadia
France, India, 2021
- Wednesday, April 12 7 PM
In Indian director “Payal Kapadia’s kaleidoscopic, Cannes prize-winning documentary . . . love for the moving image—and love for artistic creativity—marches hand in hand with the fight for political freedom” (Guardian). With a short by Amit Dutta.
View Details
Buy Tickets

Past Films

The Karrabing Film Collective
- Wednesday, February 8 7 PM
The members of the Australian Indigenous media group the Karrabing Film Collective use cell phones and handheld cameras to record daily life in their rural community as a form of grassroots resistance.
One Among Many: Women Documenting Women
- Wednesday, February 1 7 PM
In this selection of documentary and ethnographic films, women filmmakers from Lebanon, Senegal, Tanzania, and the United States employ different stylistic approaches and modes of address to depict women’s experience and work.

Documentary Voices

February 1–April 12, 2023

Every year we present an international selection of inventive documentary and nonfiction films, past and present. This year we feature a number of ethnographic films, many by women, sometimes from an outsider’s perspective, but more often depicting the filmmakers’ own communities. The films made by Indigenous makers—from the Karrabing Film Collective to Sueli and Isael Maxakali—variously incorporate dreams, myths, and ancestral memories as ways to preserve their history, depict everyday scenarios and struggles, and construct equitable alternatives. Mexican Tzotzil filmmaker Xun Sero uses conversations to uncover his mother’s life and examine cycles of violence in his community, while Paraguayan filmmaker Paz Encina, who we are delighted will be in person thanks to the Center for Latin American Studies, has created a mythological tale born out of her time with the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode people in the Paraguayan Chaco. Local sound artist and designer Ernst Karel will be in person to discuss his almost imageless film, Expedition Content, as part of two programs related to Robert Gardner’s 1961 West Papua expedition. Two films by Senegalese anthropologist and filmmaker Safi Faye of her village are complemented by two early documentaries by Alice Diop, who as a French Senegalese director (Saint Omer) focuses on migrant and Black diaspora experience, including her first visit to Senegal. In Payal Kapadia’s first feature, a film student’s letters give insight into student protests across India against religious and caste-based discrimination. Again and again, filmmaking itself becomes an act of resistance, moves the periphery to the center, and reveals hidden worlds and neglected stories through sensory imagination.

—Kathy Geritz, Film Curator

Less

This series, which continues in March and April, is curated by Natalia Brizuela and Kathy Geritz and is presented in conjunction with Brizuela’s UC Berkeley course Documentary Forms.

The conversations with the filmmakers of Yãmĩyhex, The Woman-Spirit and with Xun Sero are made possible with support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Alice Diop’s films are presented with the assistance of Maud Guenoux, Point du Jour, and Hans-Joachim Fetzer at Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art. The programs related to Robert Gardner’s New Guinea expedition are presented thanks to Ernst Karel, Documentary Educational Resources (DER), and Anthology Film Archives’s “Expedition Content” Expanded series, and with support from the National Endowment for the Arts for our Out of the Vault programs. Gustavo Caboco’s and Paz Encina’s visits are made possible with support from the Center for Latin American Studies.