Skip to Content

Search: {{$root.lsaSearchQuery.q}}, Page {{$root.page}}

Film. Kabul Transit.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011
12:00 AM
1636 International Institute, 1080 S. University

David Edwards, Maliha Zulfacar, and Gregory Whitmore, directors. In English, Dari, Pashto, Russian, and French with English subtitles (84 min., 2006). Sponsor: CREES.

In the broken cityscape of Kabul, Afghanistan, amid the dust and rubble of war, Westerners and Afghans adjust to the uncertain possibilities of peace. "Kabul Transit" shuttles through the broken streets of the city, moving between public space and private, listening in on conversations, posing questions, probing the darker alleys mainstream media avoids. The result is a unique cinematic experience—a shifting mosaic of encounters and raconteurs, captured glances and telling gestures, all beautifully shot and woven together by the music and the found sounds of a city sluggishly coming to life. Rejecting the usual device of narration and portraiture, the film asks the viewer to experience Kabul as a newly arrived visitor would—with a freshness born of apprehension on finding oneself in a place that is at once hauntingly strange and altogether familiar.