Experiencing Interruptions?

pal/imp/sest

[a revisitation of a visitation]

A choir of witnesses revisit a disrupted mourning session. The polyphonic narration oscillates between personal and found footage of how grief rituals manifest. Delving into a series of ruptures, possessions, and dispossessions is a geopoetic witnessing of colliding and entangled histories, traumas, and bodies through unfolding violence on Onondaga land, Afghanistan, and Gaza.

  • Zelikha Shoja
    Director
  • Zelikha Shoja
    Writer
  • Zelikha Shoja
    Producer
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Experimental, Student
  • Genres:
    Video Essay, experimental, documentary
  • Runtime:
    32 minutes 38 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    April 3, 2024
  • Country of Origin:
    United States, United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States, United States
  • Language:
    English, Persian
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    Yes - Syracuse University
  • Nancy Cantor Warehouse Gallery
    Syracuse
    United States
  • Novado Gallery
    Jersey City
    United States
  • Lightbeams Under a Bridge, Vol. 7
    London
    United Kingdom
    International Premiere
  • Twin Cities Arab Film Fest
    Saint Paul
    United States
    September 25, 2024
    North American Premiere
  • Close Up Film Festival
    Port Moody
    Canada
    November 9, 2024
    Canadian Premiere
  • MENA Film Festival
    Vancouver
    Canada
    January 27, 2025
    Canadian Premiere
    Runner-Up for Buraq Award, Best Short
Director Biography - Zelikha Shoja

Zelikha Zohra Shoja is an Afghan American artist and filmmaker working primarily in single-channel non-fiction and experimental modes. She is an arts educator and gham-khoor* living/working on unceded Onondaga land (Syracuse, New York) and Piscataway land (Washington, D.C.). Her artistic practice is engaged in geopoetics, personal and collective histories of rupture, and the transmission of memory. Through gestural studies, deep listening, and ephemeral fabric books, she explores how collective experiences can be transferred, mirrored, and felt by others. She holds a BIS in Diaspora Studies from George Mason University and an MFA in Art Video from Syracuse University.

Her films have screened at the Aurora Picture Show (Houston), Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse, NY), Goethe Institute (Almaty and Tashkent), Millennium Film Workshop (New York), VIFF Centre (Toronto), among others.

She has exhibited at Governors Island (New York), National Art Gallery — The Palace (Sofia), New Wight Biennial (Los Angeles), Rhizome DC (Washington, D.C.), Worth Ryder Gallery (Berkeley), among others. Zelikha is a recipient of the Fulbright U.S. Student Award (2024-25).

*Persian phrase for "grief eater”

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