We Deliver the Clouds: The Rehearsal No.1 (2022)
20'41"
Three-channel digital video, color, stereo sound
During the summer of 2021, the filmmaker was set to shoot a short film archiving her maternal home of three generations in the Kart-e-Parwan neighborhood of Kabul. Due to the chaotic U.S. withdrawal and Taliban transition to power, the project wasn’t realized. In response, a rehearsal unfolds in front of backdrops of the home’s rose garden and living room. The backdrops became alternative spaces of transplanting, remembering, and becoming a home. Small movements, shadows from the sky, improvised dialogue, and occasional laughter towards the camera set the stage for memory-making and domestic rituals.
The series will continue to piece together rehearsals, screen tests, and character and gestural studies across different cities and landscapes of the unrealized short film to create a non-linear tale of a family coming to grips with the death of their bibi, or grandmother. Each rehearsal will be staged in front of or nearby backdrops of different façades of the home.
Director, Scriptwriter, Editor, and Producer: Zelikha Shoja
Director of Photography and Producer: Hamid Sultani
Language: Dari with English subtitles
Viewing link for full video available upon request. Two-minute excerpt here.
Installation view (dual monitors on right-side of image) at the New Wight Biennale (New Wight Gallery, Los Angeles, CA) - Between the Self and its True Self: expressions of displacement and uprootedness. Photo courtesty of Farshid Bazmandegan.
Installation view (dual monitors in center of image) at the New Wight Biennale (Los Angeles, CA) - Between the Self and its True Self: expressions of displacement and uprootedness. Photo courtesty of Farshid Bazmandegan.
Installation view (dual monitors on right-side of image) at the New Wight Biennale (New Wight Gallery, Los Angeles, CA) - Between the Self and its True Self: expressions of displacement and uprootedness. Photo courtesty of Farshid Bazmandegan.
Exhibitions/screenings: New Wight Biennale, University of California – Los Angeles (2022); Middle Eastern Studies Association (MESA) 39th Annual FilmFest, Denver, CO (2022); Videotitlán, Sótano 1 Espacio, Callao, Perú and Glitteriana, Mexico City, Mexico (2022); Wild Out Video Festival, thatalright art space, Taipei City, Taiwan (2022); Migrations and the Shifting Borders, Millepiani Gallery, Rome, Italy (2023); Safe Home – Unsafe Home, Els Amics del Castell de Sant Ferran, Figueres, Spain (2023); Emergenc(y): Afghan Lives Beyond the Forever War, University of California – Berkeley (2023).