Apat (2023)
Director: Nazira Karimi
Runtime: 6 min
Language: Kazakh with English subtitles

Synopsis 

In relation to colonisation and the post-colonial condition, Apat integrates the filmmaker’s research into extinction and its results: natural disasters, cultural damage and the eradication of memory.

Combining found footage with images from Karimi’s family archive, Apat tells of the artist’s personal history—a history that is yet to be reclaimed. Karimi’s search for her own narrative mirrors the journey towards independence and coming-of-age of a people and a region.

About the Director

Born in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, Nazira Karimi is an artist and filmmaker. She is a part of the DAVRA collective and a founding member of the artist collective MATA. Currently based in Vienna, Austria, Karimi is pursuing her Magistra’s degree in Arts and Cultural Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts. Prior to that, Karimi studied Stage Design and Painting at the Almaty College of Applied Arts in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

About Monographs 2023

Monographs is a series of video and text essays on Asian cinema commissioned by the Asian Film Archive (AFA). Monographs offers a critical platform for writers and thinkers to discourse upon the moving image beyond the walls of the cinema. Responding to changing geological and socio-political landscapes, Monographs 2023 explores the tensions between form and formlessness, sound and silence, as landscapes are continually sinking, shifting, stirring.

Learn more.

You can view the video essays part of Monographs 2023 as part of an exhibition at the Oldham Theatre foyer from 26 October – 8 December 2023.