A UC Merced multimedia project that meditates on how war traumatizes everyday lives will be screened at a Danish film festival.
“After the War: an Ultrasonic Meditation” is a collaboration between media and performance studies Professor Yehuda Sharim and graduate students Chiquitha Aminsalehi, Shiraz Noorani and Bethany Padron. It combines original music, poetry, spoken words and video.
“After the War” is a Best Short Film award finalist at the Nature & Culture International Poetry Film Festival in Copenhagen. A screening is scheduled Oct. 11.
The version entered for the festival features Aminsalehi and Padron. Noorani appears in the project’s full album, posted on the website of the University of California Humanities Research Institute. UCHRI facilitates experimental, interdisciplinary humanities scholarship through partnerships, research initiatives and competitive grants.
“After the War” also is scheduled to be screened Nov. 5 at the Central Library in Calgary.
The seeds for “After the War” were planted last year, when Aminsalehi and Padron talked about visualizing and expressing the effects of war on their ancestors and on generations to come.
“We wanted to give honor to those who lost their lives too soon in a constant struggle against greed, consumption, domination and anguish,” Aminsalehi said. They wrote some lines separately, then read them to each other.
“When we finished, our eyes smiled,” she said.
For Noorani, a native of Afghanistan, war was a part of life.
“I grew up where every morning's newsbreak brought reports of killings, injuries or explosions,” he said.
Separately, Yehuda’s most recent documentary, “Where’s My Coffee Cup?” received honorable mentions recently at the Awareness Film Festival in Santa Monica and the Peachtree Village International Film Festival in Atlanta.
