"Knot's Keep" (Work-In-Progress)
A film by CML Artist-In-Residence Tamer Hassan and Armand Yervant Tufenkian

Screening and Discussion

Synopsis:
In a workshop in Queens, artisans repair a variety of rugs from the Caucasus and other parts of South, West and Central Asia. "Knot's Keep" allows the audience to become immersed in the ornamentation of the rugs and to experience the labor of attention alongside the artisans working, a space in which the act of mending becomes a quiet form of cultural transmission.

Bio:
Tamer Hassan is an artist and filmmaker whose work considers how social and historical contexts shape perception, engaging with the way others perceive their environment and material culture. His films are attempts to learn from those encounters and foreground the unexpected forms that arise through process. He draws from avant-garde and ethnographic filmmaking, using documentary conventions to produce a feeling of not knowing and to create space for an audience to participate in making meaning. Rather than describe his subjects, his films guide attention, alerting us to what may exceed our understanding. Hassan is the 2025/2026 Artist-In-Residence at the Critical Media Lab in McGill University's department of Anthropology.

Armand Yervant Tufenkian is an Armenian filmmaker, artist and writer. His debut feature "In the Manner of Smoke" (2025), a long-form observation of disparate perspectives on forest fires, premiered at Cinéma du Réel where it won the International Award. Previous films include Accession (2018) made collaboratively with Hassan, which maps an informal network of seed exchange through letter correspondence, and "in lightning Agnes" (2014), made at an elevation of ten thousand feet in the Mount Zirkel Wilderness of Colorado. Tufenkian did doctoral studies at Duke University, where he started a dissertation on the poetics of community in cinema, and studied filmmaking at CalArts. Previously he taught in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego and worked as a fire lookout in the Sierra Nevada. He is currently a lecturer in the Cinema Department at Binghamton University (SUNY).