7:30pm Wednesday, April 19, 2023
137 Isenberg School of Management, UMass Amherst
My Lost Country / Baladi Aldaia
(Ishtar Yasin Gutierrez, 2022, Chile/Iraq/Egypt/Costa Rica, In Spanish/Russian/Arabic w/ English subtitles, 96 min)
In cyclical style, as in ancient Sumerian poetry, this experimental documentary recounts the life of the filmmaker’s father—actor, professor, and theater director, Mohsen Sadoon Yasin—across Iraq, Chile, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Denmark, England, and Russia over seven decades. A tale of art, protest, and yearning for a homeland to which he could never return, told in myriad forms—photographs, letters, paintings, newspaper- clippings, cassettes, archival artifacts, and recordings from his last years in London.
Co-Sponsored by the UMass Comparative Literature Program.
Free and open to the public.
Daniel Pope
(Director of Massachusetts Multicultural Film Festival)
Daniel Pope holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, with a focus in visual culture, Daniel Pope pursues a broad array of research and teaching interests across genres, national boundaries, and cultural histories. His film courses engage national cinemas, including American, French, and Italian cinemas, as well as topics in transnational cinemas, questions of film realism, and modes of film criticism, including new media, such as videographic essays and podcasts. His recent teaching centers on such film genres as apocalyptic cinema, enigmatic or “puzzle” films, psychological thrillers, “poetic” and experimental documentaries, and speculative cinema. Daniel Pope’s research explores photography, realism, and figural approaches to nonfiction narratives. He is the Director of the Massachusetts Multicultural Film Festival. Pope is a Fulbright Scholar who has published work in Studies in East European Cinema as well as a chapter in Searching for Sebald (2007).