In the seminar, we will pick up elements of Mati Diop’s film Atlantique (and, potentially, the earlier short Atlantiques (2009), a predecessor to the feature film), to identify elements of the paranational fabric in and behind the film. In 2020, Diop recalls: “I started to imagine my film 10 years ago, before what people now call ‘the migration crisis’. Personally, I don’t believe there is a migration crisis, but a moral and political crisis. As the daughter of an immigrant, migration is part of my history and identity and so I see it as a complex and existential reality rather than a subject.” The film will also help us to better understand the complicated relations between nation, transnationality, and the paranational.

The seminar is open to the public.

Reading: Suzanne Christine Enzerink: “Black Atlantic Currents: Mati Diop’s Atlantique and the Field of Transnational American Studies,” in: Journal of Transnational American Studies 12.1 (2021), pp. 53–81.

6 May 2025, 16:00-18:00
3.K13
ZHdK, Toni-Areal, Pfingstweidstrasse 96, 8005 Zürich

This event is part of an ongoing cooperation between the SNSF-funded research project Paranational Cinema – Legacies and Practices at the Department of Film Studies, University of Zurich and the Master Cultural Critique in Curatorial Studies at Zurich University of the Arts.