The Tectonics of Humanity: Christian Frei’s Documentary Film Retrospective

Description

The retrospective opens with War Photographer (2001), Frei’s tribute to James Nachtwey, who is hailed one of the bravest and most perceptive war photographers of our time.

In Sleepless in New York (2014), Frei teams up with an anthropologist to explore the nature of heartbreak and how to overcome it, through stories of lovesick New Yorkers.

Space Tourists (2009) follows self-made millionaire Iranian-American woman Anousheh Ansari as she fulfils her dream to become the first female tourist in space. Her space travel is shown along with trips taken by Kazakh rocket debris collectors in their hunt for rocket stages.

Frei’s latest work, Genesis 2.0 (2018), observes the harsh life of mammoth hunters in the far north of Siberia, as well as high-tech clone researchers in search of mammoth cells to bring the mammoth back to life.

The Giant Buddhas (2005) depicts the Taliban’s destruction of the the world’s largest and oldest Buddha statue, which was located in Bamiyantal, Afghanistan. The documentary film examines the history and cultural resonance of the statues from many different perspectives.

Christian Frei will attend all the screenings to share his insights and experience in documentary filmmaking.