“A meditation on the relationship of human beings to the natural world, and a reckoning with the authoritative posture of conventional documentary filmmaking.”–David Markus, Frieze
Since 2017, Beirut and Berlin-based artist Marwa Arsanios has been working on a series of remarkable films collectively titled WHO IS AFRAID OF IDEOLOGY that explore ecology, feminism, collectivity, and resistance through Indigenous and women’s communities in Kurdistan, Colombia, and Lebanon. She presents the project over two evenings, each followed by a conversation about her subjects and innovative approach.
Winner of the prestigious Georges De Beauregard Award at FIDMarseille, WHO IS AFRAID OF IDEOLOGY PART 1 and PART 2 examines structures of self-governance and environmentalism fostered by the Kurdish autonomous women’s movement. Arsanios asks: How can the land provide refuge from oppression? She meets with groups of female guerrilla soldiers in the snow-dusted mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, interviews a woman who teaches others how to forage for edible weeds and medicinal plants, and travels to a small farming village in the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Syria called Jinwar, or “place of women,” where women have reimagined life without men.