The language of reality

In Heretical Empiricism, Pasolini defined cinema as 'the written language of reality'. Dialects, minority languages, and orality, play a prominent role in Khalili's videos. Through minority narratives, discourses and speeches, Khalili aims to explore the complex relationship between migratory experiences, colonial history, and postcolonial issues.
For this class, Khalili invites the audience to actively explore and discuss these specific issues in her work, specifically in her recent projects, The Straight Stories Project (2006 - 2008), The Mapping Journey Project (2008 - 2011), and Speeches (2012).

Approximate duration - 2 hours

Bouchra Khalili (b.1975, Casablanca, Morocco)
Bouchra Khalili's videos and installations focus on displacement and migration, and the relationships between physical and psychological geographies. She has mapped the tortuous and clandestine travels of illegal immigrants, asylum seekers and nomads across straits and borders in search of freedom, refuge, work, a better life, or escape from repression. In recreating these journeys, image and sound take different routes; as Khalili explains: 'in my work, the sound is the opposite of the voice-over; the sound does not explain the image, it participates in the making of the image.' She places great importance on documenting refugees' specific languages; their individual narratives of exile and loss are told in their mother tongues. As well as making her own work, Khalili is committed to promoting Arab and innovative international cinema. She is the co-founder of La Cinémathèque de Tanger, whose mission is to develop film culture in Morocco. Khalili's own films have been shown at festivals galleries and museums worldwide, including the Sharjah Biennial in 2010 and New York's Museum of Modern Art in 2011.

French film critic and curator Marie-Pierre Duhamel-Muller is the former director of the Cinéma du Réel Festival at the Pompidou Centre in Paris and a member of the selection committee for the Venice Film Festival. She writes, translates, teaches and programmes both in France and Italy and has also worked for television as a producer.