Join us for a night of short films by two South Asian Women Filmmakers, Ariella Khan and Aisha Hamid. Their screenings will be followed by a live Q&A, where audiences will have the opportunity to ask questions and learn more about their creative processes and filmmaking journey. This program is running in conjunction with our permanent exhibition Of Women by Women: South Asian Feminist Art and Artists from the Hundal Collection, an exhibition which examines how South Asian women artists, both within the region and across the diaspora, navigate their creative identities in a world shaped by patriarchal structures and racial biases.
A Sneak Peek of Their Films:
Ponytail
In this quietly observed, intimate film about a Pakistani family, a grieving daughter reconnects with her widowed father and discovers a life-altering truth about him. Subtly touching on themes of grief and depression, Ponytail captures the isolation we feel in loss, in mental and physical illness, and the many ways we show up for our family even when it is the hardest thing to do. When Farah who is grieving the death of her mother, takes a day off from work due to a migraine, her widowed father, Baba, a retired, religious man, attempts to spend time with her. Farah and Baba are estranged and awkward around each other, struggling to connect in Mama’s absence, mostly only talking when necessary. When they reconnect, Farah discovers a life-altering truth about him. Subtly touching on themes of grief, depression, and dementia, Ponytail attempts to capture the isolation we feel in loss, in mental and physical illness, and the many ways we show up for our family even when it is the hardest thing to do.
Converting
Raised between two hemispheres with opposing values and expectations, cultural confusion and contradiction has been my always. Never fully fitting into either world, my existence has been a constant off-broadway performance of different versions of myself for my different homes. And now that the Aunties are prowling on Instagram and sorority sisters are getting henna tattoos, my two worlds collide more than ever. Romantic relationships forced this conflict into the open. My identity crisis is hard enough, but to square that and compound it with another person’s makes for a beautiful, complicated, hilarious mess. Converting explores the dynamics of two people caught between worlds while caught up in each other, in a specifically South Asian American context. South Asian representation in western media today is more visible than ever before, but it’s often still composed of one-dimensional characters, written as palatable representatives for the mainstream rather than real, complicated, messy, people. Converting is about the confused and complex for the complex and confused.
About the Filmakers
Ariella Khan is a writer and director raised between the Midwest of America and Karachi, Pakistan. She recently graduated from Northwestern University where she studied film and creative writing. Much of her work focuses on grappling with her Pakistani-American identity and the intersections of assimilation, colonization and intergenerational familial relationships. She is now freelancing in Chicago and working through post-production for her new web series “Converting.” Aside from filmmaking, she enjoys painting, binge-watching new shows and eating all the ice cream.
Aisha Hamid is a poet and writer from Lahore, Pakistan presently in her first year in the Writing for the Screen and Stage MFA program at Northwestern University. She has an MA in Gender and International Development from the University of Warwick and a BSc in Sociology from the Lahore University of Management Sciences. Her writing explores South Asian women’s lived experiences, their agency and the multiple meanings it holds for them, as well as mental illness, generational trauma, and sisterhood. She was shortlisted by the Zeenat Haroon Rashid Writing Prize for Women in 2019. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Pleiades, Vallum Magazine, The Aleph Review and elsewhere.