​HYSTERICAL DOCUMENT 

“We have always urged our audience to treat our documents as ‘hysterical documents’ in the sense that they are not based on any one person’s actual memories but on ‘fantasies erected from the material of collective memories.”

–Walid Raad

 SCREEN: HYSTERICAL DOCUMENT is organized around short films that function as alternative types of documentation made in the wake of war and its aftermath.  Whether projecting fictional history onto real archival material, staging performative and poetic interventions among ruins, or manipulating the material of film itself, each of the works in this program emotively redefine the way cinema is typically utilized to represent narratives of survival following geopolitical catastrophe. These films, while entrenched in the memory of conflict and displacement, speculate about alternative futures and interrogate, or deviate from, the convention of documentary filmmaking. 

Participating artists include Lida Abdul, Walid Raad, and Jennifer Saparzadeh. HYSTERICAL DOCUMENT is organized by Nevin Kallepalli.