FxB: The Unwriting of Disaster
We are proud to announce that the first Flaherty x Boulder program will take place virtually at the inaugural Mimesis Documentary Festival. FxB is a new series showcasing important works of historical and contemporary documentary media art.
The Unwriting of Disaster
Flaherty x Boulder at MDF 2020
Curated by Devon Narine-Singh, Suneil Sanzgiri, and Alia Ayman
For the first ever retrospective of films screened across the 66-year history of the Flaherty Seminar, this online program brings together films that work in opposition to the spectacularization of tragedy.
To write the disaster, to document the catastrophic, to bear witness to the unbearable event all seem to have become default impulses in times of crises. Luckily, this fervor to record has not remained unchallenged. Image-makers from all over the world continue to create works that overhaul the free-floating belief in the merits of visibility, archiving and inscription, thereby favoring the poetic to the sensational. This retrospective of previous films screened at the Flaherty Seminar looks to how these artists and filmmakers have responded to the explosive, destructive and inescapable forces of their times.
Peter Hutton, Boston Fire (1979)
Flaherty Seminar, 1954