Saturday, August 5 at 8 PM

Doors 7:30 pm. FREE!

Nobel Nok Dah offers an intimate view into the lives of three refugee women from Burma, whose migratory paths cross in Thailand and eventually meet when they resettle to central New York. Drawing upon methods of feminist oral history and ethno-fiction, the film traces glimmers of subjectivity that complicate any singular narrative of the refugee experience. As camera movements follow the textures of everyday life and work, a weave of sensorial fragments immerse audiences in women’s narratives of self, place, and belonging.

For My Art is a two-channel video installation which conjures the sensorial landscape of transition-era Burma/Myanmar through the figure of the performance artist. The camera follows five women performance artists as they venture into the streets, markets, and mega-malls of Yangon, transforming the quotidian into unexpected performance spaces. As ordinary people and objects are swept into their art, the boundaries between performance and everyday life begin to disappear.

Above and Below the Ground tells the story of daring indigenous women activists and rock musicians who come together in the ongoing struggle against the Myitsone Dam and for environmental self-determination across their native Kachinland. Through investigation, protest, prayer, and music, they test the boundaries of tentative democratic reform in Northern Myanmar, and work to create a future in which native peoples have the right to care for and protect their own lands and natural resources.

This screening is part ACTION! Cinema as Sanctuary, a free summer series presenting political documentary films and workshops. ACTION! is made possible by support from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

DIRECTOR/PRODUCER
Emily Hong is a Seoul-born and New York-raised feminist anthropologist, filmmaker, and co-founder of Rhiza Collective and EthnoCine Films. Emily has directed several collaborative films including Get By (2014), Nobel Nok Dah (2015), and For My Art (2016), which have explored issues of solidarity and labor, womanhood and identity in the refugee experience, and the gendered spectatorship of performance art. Her research, media projects, and activist engagements are largely rooted in Thailand and Burma, where she has spent over half a decade working as a trainer with minority and indigenous activists, and as a campaigner for Burma’s democracy movement-in-exile. Emily’s films and video installations have been screened in Athens, Chiang Mai, Lisbon, Paris, New York, and Yangon.

Filmmaker in attendance!

FILMS
Nobel Nok Dah (2015), 23 min
For My Art (2015), 20 min
Above and Below the Ground (2017), 3 min

Nobel Nok Dah and For My Art were co-directed with Miasarah Lai and Mariangela Mihai

FREE WORKSHOP
Emily Hong also will hold a free workshop on “Social Justice Music Videos” on August 6, Sunday from 12-5PM. To sign up, please visit http://www.echoparkfilmcenter.org/events/categories/school/

ACTION! Cinema as Sanctuary
Political documentary films take on a renewed role amid a reinvigorated rage against immigrants, refugees, and people of color in many places around the world. Through politically engaged cinematic work, many filmmakers are confronting old and new forms of racism, the deepening ungrievability of Black and Brown lives, and precarious realities faced by minority communities including indigenous peoples, the elderly, refugees, women and children. ACTION! series: Cinema as Sanctuary features political documentary films that re-assert the images and stories that remind us that a compassionate world rooted upon solidarity, friendship, and collective action is possible.

Screenings:

June 2 The Native and the Refugee, Indian Winter (with Matt Peterson and Malek Rasamny)

June 16 Pangandoy (with Hiyasmin Saturay)

July 7 Laps, Mother’s Day (with R.J. Lozada)

July 21 (TBD)

August 4 Nobel Nok Dah, For My Art (with Emily Hong)

Curated by Nerve Macaspac of the Echo Park Film Center (EPFC), with special support provided by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Nerve is an award-winning filmmaker and a PhD candidate at UCLA Geography Department. His research focuses on community-led spatial strategies in protecting vulnerable civilian lives.

All screenings and workshops are free.

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