We are pleased to announce that Shezad Dawood’s ‘Towards The Possible Film’(2014), housed in Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, will be screened in Guggenheim New York from April to April 19.
⠀
Towards the Possible Film is an evocative science fiction tableau produced in Morocco and rendered in the ancient Berber dialect of Tamazight. In this dreamlike tale, any linear understanding of time, or cause and effect, is disrupted. Through Dawood’s staging of an encounter between two blue-skinned astronauts and a band of apparently indigenous cave dwellers, it would be easy to assume that a futuristic, advanced civilization has landed to colonize a developing one. Yet, the film allows for multiple potentialities. The extraterrestrial visitors appear nervous; their space cadet suits recall an outmoded vision of the future, like a relic of the past. By contrast, the tribespeople’s agile relationship to their environment could be an evolved existence, a resilience born out of surviving an apocalypse. As the narrative unfolds, the cinematic trope of “us versus them” is undone and left open-ended. —Jessica Cerasi, Assistant Curator, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi
⠀
*
‘Towards the Possible Film’, 2014, HD and Super 16mm transferred to HD, 20 mins.
Commissioned by @filmvidumbrella Film and Video Umbrella and @delfinafdn Delfina Foundation.
Rendering by Lucie Rebeyrol