Eric Baudelaire, Also Known as Jihadi
May 16, 2018, 7pm
311 East Broadway
New York, NY 10002
USA
Join us at e-flux on Wednesday, May 16 at 7pm for the second evening of ArteEast’s spring screening series Films, Facts, and Fiction. The evening features Eric Baudelaire’s latest film Also Known As Jihadi (2017), followed by a video broadcast by the filmmaker recorded especially for the event, and live responses to the film by Alia Ayman (filmmaker and PhD student, NYU), Brian Kuan Wood (e-flux journal), and Sarah Rifky (ArteEast).
Eric Baudelaire, Also Known as Jihadi, 2017
Full HD, 102 minutes
Eric Baudelaire’s award-winning film features the story of Aziz, a young man from the Parisian suburbs, and his journey to join al-Nusra Front in Aleppo to fight against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Aziz himself never appears throughout the film; his story is construed though the landscapes he saw in his life, from France to Syria and back, juxtaposed with documents—court records, police reports, surveillance and interrogation transcripts. The film’s title and genre both call on Masao Adachi’s A.K.A Serial Killer (1969), which interrogates a cinematographic approach known as landscape theory. Landscape theory, developed out of Marxist film criticism of the 1970s, posits that all surrounding landscape is an expression of dominant political power. Also Known as Jihadi was shot in multiple locations including France, Spain, Algeria, and the Syrian border in Turkey, and was produced in the aftermath of the Bataclan attacks that took place in Paris in October 2015.
Eric Baudelaire (b. 1973, Salt Lake Utah) is an artist and filmmaker based in Paris. His work explores the relationship between images, past events, and their documentation, employing a research-based approach. His practice comprises photography, printing, performance, installation, and most often film. Baudelaire is interested in the cinematographic image as an index, and the relationship between behavior, political structures, and perception. His most recent solo exhibitions have been hosted by the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Fridericianum in Kassel, the Berkley Art Museum, and the Kadist Art Foundation in San Francisco. His filmography includes Letters to Max (2014), The Ugly One (2013), and The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi and 27 Years without Images (2011).
This program is part of ArteHub 2018, and is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
For more information, contact program@e-flux.com.