Leadership for the Ecozoic's Dandelions Screening Series Presents:

Two films by Tamer Hassan

Homing
2023, 34min

Centuries prior to the colonization of the Americas, Purple Martins began to nest in gourds that people hung to store food and water and became companion species for many tribes. The birds that European settlers brought with them drove Purple Martins out of their wild habitats so that now they can only nest in birdhouses that people build to prevent their extinction. Homing follows the migration of Purple Martins from the Amazon to the Great Lakes, between the conservationists who study them and to the houses they are dependent on for survival.

Accession
2018, 49min, Co-Directed by Armand Yervant Tufenkian

Accession is a work of exquisite textures cultivated from grains of film, the grains of the voice, and the grains of the field and the garden. The film springs from a trove of letters, written to accompany packets of seeds shared between friends and strangers, which collectively narrate centuries of American horticulture. To trace the connections between the diverse communities linked by these seed exchanges, Tamer Hassan and Yervant Tufenkian crisscrossed the United States over five years, shooting on a range of (mostly expired) film stocks and harvesting images of arresting beauty. Over these scenes, a chorus of voices read the letters aloud, patiently unfolding minor histories of American life and the social and natural relationships that shape its farms, flowerbeds, and wilds. 

With the filmmaker in-person for a post-screening Q+A

Location: Critical Media Lab, Peterson Hall 108

Bio: Tamer Hassan has screened his films internationally including at Viennale, Cinéma du Réel, Lincoln Center’s Art of the Real, Mar Del Plata International Film Festival, Sheffield DocFest and Punto de Vista. He teaches at Parsons School of Design.