Nashashibi’s beguiling films observe the textures and rhythms of the world around us with a distant stare. At once aware of the artifice of the documentary image and critical of its conditions of production, she chronicles the rituals of everyday life, abstracting them visually, anthropologically, and sometimes theatrically. Her works address wide-ranging subjects—life on board a Mediterranean cargo ship, the behaviors of loitering NYPD cops, the comings and goings of a gay cruising spot in North London—but never directly. With images both strange and elusive, Nashashibi allows happenstance, intuition, and association to guide her patient observations into these social systems. Program length: 60 minutes.
