Frozen River Film Festival at the WAC—Blurring Borders: Cinema & Home

Co-curated by Michelle Baroody and Sharon Mansur

Showcasing Arab and SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African) artists and filmmakers, this set of short films challenges documentary form as well as common narratives/images of immigration and displacement. The makers featured in this segment use cinema to expand visibility both within and outside their ancestral homelands, interrogating the policies that enforce borders and mass displacement. The films in this program depict home, place, identity, and belonging, as well as loss, scattering, and letting go, and in addition to challenging the arbitrary lines on maps, they challenge the boundaries between documentary and narrative cinema and between reality and fiction. Inviting participants and audience members to consider new ways of looking at home, immigration, and exile, this film program reflects on both past and present to consider a different future, one that can be found through art practice. A short discussion with local artists and programmers will follow the films.

Presented in partnership with The Cedar Tree Project, Frozen River Film Festival, and Mizna.

The Cedar Tree Project presents, supports and amplifies​ contemporary art and artists of Arab/SWANA heritage and regions, inviting deeper understanding, empathy ​and engagement through artistic exchange. www.cedartreeproject.com

Mizna is a critical platform for contemporary literature, film, art, and cultural production centering the work of Arab and SWANA artists. https://mizna.org/

Michelle Baroody is an educator and a film curator, who currently resides in St. Paul, Minnesota. She received her PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Minnesota in 2019. She teaches film and literature classes at the Blake School in Minneapolis and is the curator of Mizna’s Arab Film Festival, the Mizna Film Series, and the Tulsa Arab Film Festival. She is also co-founder of Archives on Screen, an organization dedicated to bringing archival films to Twin Cities venues, and a volunteer projectionist at the Trylon Cinema.

Sharon Mansur is a dance and interdisciplinary artist, curator, educator and community mover and shaker based in Winona, MN, Dakota land. Her performances, visual installations and screendance projects have been shared nationally and internationally. She facilitates The Cedar Tree Project, presenting Arab/SWANA centered contemporary art and artists, and SHIFT~ performance salons, supporting new experimental collaborations among Winona area creatives.

www.mansurdance.com, www.cedartreeproject.com

Andrea Shaker (she/her) lives on Dakota and Anishinaabe lands. Shaker’s creative work is interdisciplinary, spanning photography, moving image, experimental film, and written and spoken word. She is a professor of art at the College of St. Benedict | St. John’s University. She currently lives with her family in Minnesota. www.andreashaker.com

Sharon Mansur is a fiscal year 2023 recipient of a Creative Support for Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature; and by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The WAC is pleased to host screenings for the FRFF on February 5, 6, 10 and 11. For information on screenings and to purchase tickets please visit the FRFF website at https://frff.org/