Film Screening and Artist Conversation: Karrabing Film Collective

Wednesday, February 7, 2024 at 4:30pm
Zilkha Uncommons Reading Room, South Gallery, Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery

FREE!

The Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery presents Night Fishing with Ancestors (2023, 25 minutes), the most recent work of the Karrabing Film Collective, a grassroots indigenous media group of approximately 30 members living in Australia’s Northern Territory. This screening will be followed by a conversation with Elizabeth A. Povinelli, a founding member of the collective and Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at Columbia University, and George Bajalia, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Wesleyan University.

Read "CFA Exhibit Celebrates 50 Years of History" in The Wesleyan Connection.

"If you haven’t encountered the Karrabing Film Collective previously, their media works are not only powerful explorations of settler colonialism, but the very formation of the collective helps us to imagine art as means of organizing and activism," said Joshua Lubin-Levy '06, Director of the Center for the Arts. "It’s an incredible model for the Center for the Arts as we look towards continuing to build real relationships with artists and community partners both near and far. This event is recommended for any students looking for some guidance putting transformative thought into creative practice."

The Karrabing Film Collective is a grassroots media group that comprises approximately 30 members of different generations, most of whom live in the Belyuen Community in Australia’s Northern Territory. The work of the collective dramatizes and satirizes the political, social, and economic conditions faced by the indigenous population in Australia, challenging historical and contemporary structures of settler colonial power. The Karrabing Film Collective was included in the gallery’s group exhibition A SCULPTURE, A FILM & SIX VIDEOS in 2020, and are also featured in the current exhibtion, Always Being Relation: 50 Years of the Gallery at the CFA, on display through Sunday, March 3, 2024.

Elizabeth A. Povinelli is a founding member of the Karrabing Film Collective, and has known and worked with the members since 1984. She is also an anthropologist, activist, and Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at Columbia University.

This event is presented as part of the gallery’s 50th anniversary programming.

For more information about the exhibition Always Being Relation: 50 Years of the Gallery at the CFA, please visit the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery website.

Image: Video still from Night Fishing with Ancestors (2023) by Karrabing Film Collective.