MoMA's annual celebration of nonfiction cinema returns with a showcase of the most innovative, vital voices in documentary and hybrid filmmaking. In its 23rd year, Doc Fortnight's wide-ranging slate continues to bring New York City audiences award-winning debuts, film-festival highlights from around the world, and adventurous new films by moving-image artists.

This film series is part of Doc Fortnight.

Schedule of Events

February 22, 2024

7:00 p.m. - Realm of Satan. 2024. Directed by Scott Cummings

Followed by a conversation with Scott Cummings

A decade after his acclaimed short Buffalo Juggalos, New York–based filmmaker and editor Scott Cummings's debut feature centers on another tantalizing group at the margins: the Church of Satan. Instead of sensationalizing or proselytizing, Cummings taps into the Church's own strong aesthetic identity to craft an atmospheric portrait from the inside out, knowingly dealing in ceremony, fantasy, and the occult. In a series of largely wordless tableaux, the mundane and the extraordinary collide as the film follows Satanists in their daily lives (and maximalist decors). Transgressive and irreverent, gracefully uniting hardcore vérité and visual hijinks with Cummings's avant-garde roots, Realm of Satan is a heady look at a subculture that has an undeniable grasp on the imagination of the United States and beyond. Recipient of the Rooftop Films Edgeworx Grant.

Location: MoMA, Floor T2/T1

February 23, 2024

4:30 p.m.
The Axis of Big Data. 2024. Directed by Zhou Tao
Terminal Island. 2024. Directed by Sam Drake

Chinese artist Zhou Tao is known for finding otherworldly landscapes where humanity and nature intersect, which he captures in long, static shots. In The Axis of Big Data, he delves deeper into this thematic obsession, but employs a different method: cinematography in continuous motion. A data center in the mountainous southwestern province of Guizhou is at the heart of his newest work, presented through a panoramic sweep around the facility's surrounding rural farmland. In a play of contrasts, the camera drifts across blades of grass, meeting local farmers, tourists, and animals along the way, all to a joined hum of whirling hard drives and chirping insects. The point of view feels uncanny: it's hard to tell whether Zhou's lens embodies an observant creature or a surveilling technology. Either way, its curious gaze brings together a constellation of entities that co-exist in the same environment but seem worlds apart. In Terminal Island, Milwaukee-based filmmaker Sam Drake's camera similarly alienates familiar spaces. Heat is overtaking Los Angeles, and Drake finds small corners revealing evidence of ecological collapse.

Location: MoMA, Floor T2/T1

7:00 p.m. - Preemptive Listening. 2024. Directed by Aura Satz

Followed by a conversation with Aura Satz

Aura Satz's inventive documentary, the latest iteration of the artist's ongoing project on sirens, is sonic collage, design history, and thought experiment in equal measure. Filming in locations as varied as the Fukushima nuclear site in Japan and alert-system assembly lines in the US, Satz considers the siren as a cipher for contemporary ideas of emergency and preparedness. A relic of World War II and Cold War infrastructure, today the siren can be read as a warning sign, a crisis management tool, an emblem of climate collapse—and even, in the age of predictive policing, a threat in and of itself. Preemptive Listening features original compositions from over 20 experimental musicians reimagining what form the siren can take, from harp melodies to the rumbling of the Earth's core. Breaking free from the weight of catastrophes past, Satz's film conjures alternative ways to respond to the siren's call as a path toward possible futures.

Location: MoMA, Floor T2/T1

February 24, 2024

1:30 p.m.: True Stories: Doc Fortnight Shorts

O Seeker. 2024. USA/India. Directed by Gavati Wad. In Hindi, English; English subtitles. 18 min. US premiere.
Moon v. State. 2024. USA. Directed by James N. Kienitz Wilkins. 16 min. World premiere.
315. 2023. Netherlands/Peru. Directed by Daniel Jacoby. In Spanish; English subtitles. 14 min. North American premiere.
The Moon Also Rises. 2024. France. Directed by Yuyan Wang. In Mandarin; English subtitles. 23 min. North American premiere.

From the personal to the cosmic, this grouping of artists' films demonstrates that the most daring and probing works are often short in form. In Gavati Wad's O Seeker, a flurry of 16mm images—from circus acts to photograms—accompanies a young woman's swirling thoughts on the magic of science and its mythological roots through conversations, possibly imagined, with scientists, spiritual healers, and loved ones. James N. Kienitz Wilkins returns to Doc Fortnight with Moon v. State, an archival photo-film whose rapid-fire monologue by Emily Davis (star of Broadway's Is This a Room) harkens back to the disarray of a small Texas town in the late 1950s, where a bewildering robbery has gone fatally awry. In 315, Peruvian artist Daniel Jacoby's birthday, May 31, becomes the beat that gives structure to the chaos brought about by sorting through years of home movies and streams of found imagery, searching for the junctures where his own life coincides with world events of all stripes. Inspired by China's plans to launch artificial moons to light up the night sky above urban areas, Yuyan Wang's The Moon Also Rises features a retired couple holding onto the last gasp of darkness the night before permanent light takes over.

Location: MoMA, Floor T2/T1

4:00 p.m. - Small Hours of the Night. 2024. Directed by Daniel Hui

Followed by a conversation with Daniel Hui

Largely unfolding within the four walls of a smoke-filled room, Daniel Hui's atmospheric chamber drama is a daring fever dream—and a rare cinematic foray into Singapore's political history. In the 1960s, in the newly independent city-state, a man interrogates a woman who, over the course of a rainy night, begins to channel voices from the future. Drawing on real-life court testimonies from the 1970 and '80s, sometimes verbatim, Hui's austere docu-fiction conjures the absurdities and cruelties of statecraft. Shot on black-and-white 16mm film, the smoke and shadows that envelop each glance and gesture evoke multitudes of defendants—here coalescing in a single protagonist—who cycled through a merciless court of law. While this blurring of identities sends the story spiraling into delirium, Hui's commitment to exploring truth remains stoically certain.

Location: MoMA, Floor T2/T1

7:00 p.m. - Monisme. 2023. Directed by Riar Rizaldi

Followed by a conversation with Riar Rizaldi

One of Indonesia's active volcanoes, Mount Merapi, becomes the epicenter for different points of view in this riveting work of hybrid docu-fiction. Mixing eco-horror, ethnography, and investigative drama, Riar Rizaldi's arresting confluence of cinematic modes channels the myriad relationships that exist between the volcano and those who live and work at its foothills. Featuring a screenplay cowritten with a volcanologist, a sand miner, and a shaman, the film's dedication to collaboration dismantles hierarchies between knowledge and beliefs. Captured with stunning cinematography, Mount Merapi becomes an active participant, even protagonist, of a multi-character narrative in which a volcanic eruption would mean imminent death for some and a new beginning for others.

Location: MoMA, Floor T2/T1

February 25, 2024

2:00 p.m. - Silence of Reason. 2023.

Directed by Kumjana Novakova

Followed by a conversation with Kumjana Novakova

Kumjana Novakova's award-winning second feature shakes open the archive of what has come to be known as the Fo?a Rape Camp Trial, which led to the codification of mass rape and sexual enslavement as a weapon of war as crimes against humanity under international law. Drawing on survivor testimonies that reveal the depths of war crimes committed against women and girls during the Bosnian War, Novakova's unflinching film preserves the subjects' anonymity while bearing witness to their collective memory—and their astounding bravery before the court. Juxtaposing text and landscape—some images even bear traces of video degradation, as if the crime scenes they depict are demanding to be seen despite all attempts to hide them—the film declares the importance of listening no matter how challenging it might be. As Novakova puts it, "Silence of Reason is a tiny cinematic memorial to both [the womens'] courage and their selfless contribution to a more just society."

Location: MoMA, Floor T2/T1

4:30 p.m. - The New Ruins. 2024. Directed by Manuel Embalse

Followed by a conversation with Manuel Embalse and Joaquín Maito (Antes Muerto Cine Collective)

Personal obsession and archeological excavation meet in Manuel Embalse's propulsive second feature, culled from a decade's worth of documenting e-waste in his native Buenos Aires and farther afield. The cracked screens, stray wires, old monitors, and obsolete devices that populate the quotidian and weird landscapes become the subject of Embalse's gently absurd, sometimes unsettling first-person musings on the technologies that have become central to daily life. This audiovisual rollercoaster through digital flotsam and jetsam unleashes meditations on memory, environmental crisis, and overproduction. With curiosity and verve, The New Ruins peers into the glow of the screen and searches for meaning in the traces of modern-day fossils.

Location: MoMA, Floor T2/T1

February 26, 2024

7:00 p.m. - Hollywoodgate. 2024. Directed by Ibrahim Nash'at

Followed by a conversation with Ibrahim Nash'at

In August 2021, as the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan dominated headlines, Egyptian journalist Ibrahim Nash'at had his sights on what would happen next. Spending a year with unprecedented (if heavily controlled) access while embedded with the Taliban, he became a unique witness to the extremist militia's return to power. Inside the Hollywoodgate compound, rumored to be a former CIA base, Nash'at shadowed members of the newly minted air force as they attempted to rehab billions of dollars of armaments left behind by the US. In a kind of sinister chamber drama, the inner workings of the Taliban's regime of brutal repression plays out against a web of obsequious favor-currying, ambition, and revenge among individual commanders. As a work of observational cinema, Hollywoodgate treads an astonishing tightrope: between what the Taliban wants the world to see and what the filmmaker is able to capture, the plight of the Afghan people and the cost of the longest war in US history remain strongly felt.

Location: MoMA, Floor T2/T1

February 27, 2024

7:00 p.m. - Resonance Spiral. 2024. Directed by Filipa César, Marinho de Pina

Followed by a conversation with Filipa Cesar and Marinho de Pina

In September 2022, Mediateca Onshore was inaugurated in Malafo, a village in Guinea-Bissau, marking a half-century of Guinean cinema production. Resonance Spiral documents the construction of this community screening space—but what's being built is so much more. Part of a decade-long project instigated by filmmakers and artists Filipa César, Sana na N'Hada, and Marinho de Pina, among others, the building is a site for preserving Guinean militant cinema histories, a portal for making audiovisual archives from of the country's revolutionary movement accessible to the public. The film follows workshops underway in the multiuse structure, as women from an agricultural workers' association nearby listen to reels of Amílcar Cabral advocating for women's liberation circa 1970, finding repose as they commune with ancestral voices from the past. Meanwhile, the filmmakers surface the tensions they see at play in their own project, and turn the tables on documentary norms. Whether conversing with neighboring mangroves or immersed in moving-image reverie, Resonance Spiral is a ravishing, rigorous experiment in crafting community through cinema.

Location: MoMA, Floor T2/T1

February 28, 2024

7:00 p.m. - Republic. 2023. Directed by Jin Jiang

Followed by a conversation with Jin Jiang

Chinese hippie Eryang lives out his own version of communism in Republic, his six-square-meter apartment where young Beijing misfits hang about. Time comes to a halt for the drug-addled adolescents in this cluttered room, somewhere between psychedelic utopia and claustrophobic hell, dream and reality. Jia Jiang's camera remains unobtrusive, an impressive achievement in such a cramped, swarming mess, as Eryang and his visitors wax poetic in a verbal cocktail of political philosophy and Internet babble. For visitors, Republic is a temporary escape; for Eryang, it is seemingly his only way of being, funded by online gambling and loans piled upon loans. Republic is a time capsule of the present for Chinese youth stuck in hopes and promises, afraid that if they open the curtains they might not like what they see.

Location: MoMA, Floor T2/T1

February 29, 2024

7:00 p.m. - Soundtrack to a Coup D'Etat. 2024.

Directed by Johan Grimonprez

Followed by a conversation with Johan Grimonprez

Multimedia artist and filmmaker Johan Grimonprez, who last appeared at Doc Fortnight with his 2009 Double Take, returns to the festival with an engrossing essay-film that examines how jazz and geopolitics collide in a nefarious chapter of Cold War history: the murder of Patrice Lumumba. The year is 1960, the Voice of America Jazz Hour broadcasts the likes of Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie behind the Iron Curtain, while a wave of decolonization movements tear through the African continent and the struggle for civil rights marches on stateside. Beat by beat, Grimonprez traces Lumumba's rise from 36-year-old independence leader to Congo's first democratically elected prime minister—and how corporate and colonial interests, along with machinations at the United Nations, conspired in his assassination. Deeply researched, the film interweaves archival records, home movies, newly unearthed speeches by Lumumba, and published memoirs by Congolese activists and writers with the story of the Black jazz legends who defined the era in more ways than one. Pulsating with the energy of the period, Soundtrack to a Coup d'État's chilling indictment of colonial power roars on in the present day.

Location: MoMA, Floor T2/T1

March 1, 2024

7:00 p.m.
Karaoke Cafe BOSA. 2022. Directed by Kaori Oda
GAMA. 2023. Directed by Kaori Oda

Kaori Oda, winner of the Pia Film Festival's first Oshima Prize (awarded by jury members including Ryuichi Sakamoto and Kiyoshi Kurosawa), has come to be known in Japan for her sensory, immersive nonfiction work. Since studying at Béla Tarr's film.factory she has mostly shot films outside her home country, in such settings as a Bosnian coal mine and sinkholes in Mexico. For GAMA she gets closer to home, in Okinawa, and replaces her frenzied camerawork with static 16mm filmmaking. Her setting of choice, once again, is underground: the Chibichirigama cave, where 83 locals, believing death at the hands of American soldiers was imminent, committed mass suicide in the waning days of World War II. A local guide narrates this historical tragedy while choreographer Nao Yoshigai, embodying what could be a spirit, observes and protects this act of conservation. Karaoke Cafe BOSA, which opens the screening program, sees Oda explore even closer to home: her mother's workplace in the outskirts of Osaka. Intimately shot with an 8mm camera, Oda's film captures the warm ambience of a café where elderly women gather to sing and converse.

Followed by a conversation with Kaori Oda

Location: MoMA, Floor T2/T1

March 2, 2024

6:00 p.m. - Arriba Está el Mar, Presented by Sociedad del Tiempo Libre

Followed by a conversation with the filmmakers

Throughout the Caribbean region, the sea is visible when you climb toward the sky, up in the mountains. All the works in this screening, guest curated by the Puerto Rico–based artist cooperative Sociedad del Tiempo Libre, have a link to the expansive and expanded, multifaceted Caribbean and move through iconic scenes—carnival, bucolic tropical landscape, exuberant musical city—in which an event or a specific history unfolds through gesture and voice. The program, featuring short films by Juan Carlos Alom, Miryam Charles, Joiri Minaya, Ricardo Ariel Toribio, Luis Arnías, Laura Sofía Pérez, and Minia Biabiany, will be presented by STL's Beatriz Santiago Muñoz and Pablo Guardiola, with select filmmakers present.

Habana Solo. 2000. Cuba. Directed by Juan Carlos Alom. No dialogue. 15 min. 16mm transferred to digital video. New York premiere
Tous le jours de Mai (All the Days of May). 2023. Canada. Directed by Miryam Charles. In Creole, French; English subtitles. 7 min.
The Promise of Progress. 2023. Dominican Republic. Directed by Joiri Minaya. In Spanish; English subtitles. 7 min. North American premiere
Rebeca. 2023. Dominican Republic. Directed by Ricardo Ariel Toribio. In Spanish; English subtitles. 11 min. World premiere
Bisagras. 2024. Senegal/Brazil. Directed by Luis Arnías. No dialogue. 18 min. World premiere
How to Love a Place so the Children Will Love Their Land. 2023. Puerto Rico. Directed by Laura Sofía Pérez. In Spanish; English subtitles. 12 min.
Learning from the White Birds. 2021. Guadeloupe. Directed by Minia Biabiany. 6 min. New York premiere

Location: MoMA, Floor T2/T1

March 4, 2024

7:00 p.m. - An Evening with Gelare Khoshgozaran

Los Angeles–based artist Gelare Khoshgozaran's film and video work engages conceptions of exile and belonging, from the personal impact of displacement to broader legacies of imperial violence. For their first New York solo screening, Khoshgozaran presents the New York premiere of The Retreat (2023) and a new 35mm slide-essay film.

Location: MoMA, Floor T2/T1

March 5, 2024

7:00 p.m. - Cinema After Place: Tiffany Sia and Pavle Levi in Conversation

Newsreel 670 - Red Forests. 2022. Slovenia. Directed by Nika Autor. In Slovenian; English subtitles. 16 min. US premiere

The Sojourn. 2023. USA/Taiwan. Directed by Tiffany Sia. In Mandarin; English subtitles with deliberate omission of subtitling in select parts. 32 min. World premiere

Artist and filmmaker Tiffany Sia (DF 2021) returns to Doc Fortnight with the world theatrical premiere of The Sojourn (2023). Her newest work, a restless road movie shot in Taiwan, forms the starting point for a conversation between Sia and Stanford University film scholar Pavle Levi. Sparked by the speakers' shared interest in the minor histories of the Cold War, this program delves into the landscape film as a method for reconsidering notions of place and national imaginaries.

In The Sojourn, Sia retraces the steps of director King Hu through the locations of his breakthrough Dragon Inn (1967) accompanied by the film's lead actor, Shih Chun. Born in Beijing, Hu left for Hong Kong in 1949 and never returned. In the mountain roads and misty landscapes where this wuxia swordplay picture was filmed, Sia locates the convergence of vernacular cinema and exilic memory. The Sojourn screens in a double bill with Newsreel 670 – Red Forests (2022), a different meditation on geopolitical terrain by the Slovenian filmmaker Nika Autor. In it, Autor surveys razor wire erected alongside the EU border, charting how the portable, deadly coils take over the landscape while bearing witness to "clandestine refuge [and] solidarity" across space and time.

Location: MoMA, Floor T2/T1

March 6, 2024

7:00 p.m. - Black Box Diaries. 2024. Directed by Shiori Ito

Followed by a conversation with Shiori Ito

Journalist Shiori It? turns the camera on herself in a breathtakingly courageous investigation of her own sexual assault, which resulted in a landmark case for the Me Too movement in Japan. From courtrooms to video diary entries, the film follows It?'s 2017 court battle in real time, which is made all the more gripping by its palpable mix of journalistic acumen and harrowing trauma. Along the journey to bring It?'s high-powered attacker to justice, Black Box Diaries also becomes an indictment of the legal system and social customs that actively thwart survivors of abuse. Ultimately more personal than the searing written memoir that sparked a historic reckoning in Japanese society, It?'s film is a powerful experience of her pursuit of justice—and healing.

Location: MoMA, Floor T2/T1

Date: February 22-March 6, 2024

Cost:
Adult: $14
Senior 65 and over with ID: $12
Student Full-time with ID: $10
Child 16 and under: Free

Location:
The Museum Of Modern Art,
11 West 53 Street,
New York, NY 10019.

Click Here for more information