Personal Cinema: Mehdi Jahan

On Friday June 23rd Millennium Film Workshop is pleased to present a selection of work by Assamese filmmaker Mehdi Jahan.

Mehdi Jahan is a filmmaker, visual artist and teacher based in Guwahati (Assam), India. His work confronts normative, dominant, and mainstream modes of image production, incorporating elements from the rich oral storytelling traditions of his region, cultivating a purely sensorial aesthetic through narrative and material experimentations to arrive at a synthesis between personal and collective histories, generating a language of film closer to poetry, memories and dreams.

His formal investigations and expression emerge from a deep personal association and engagement with the history of Cinema, oral storytelling techniques (particularly the Sufi oral tradition of his paternal grandparents), and the relationship between the two, opening up a multitude of cinematic possibilities. He strongly believes the dreams, memories, and personal stories of individuals are windows which make visible the political narratives of a place.

Millennium Film Workshop Programmer Alex Faoro will be sharing four films of Jahan’s, made between 2017 and 2023: Jyoti and Joymoti, The home my mother never found, Can they hear our songs? and his most recent film What would have been there had there been nothing. Following the program, Alex will join Mehdi in a conversation (online) to discuss the films and talk about Jahan’s work more generally, as well as his thoughts on cinema and other related matters.

ONLINE Q+A with Filmmaker to follow screening

FILMS:

Jyoti and Joymoti

The home my mother never found

Can they hear our songs?

What would have been there had there been nothing