Under the Falling Sky: Films by Gürcan Keltek, Ali Cherri, and An-My Lê

Join us at e-flux Screening Room on Tuesday, October 15 at 7pm for a special screening that brings together works by Gürcan Keltek, Ali Cherri, and An-My Lê. This program delves into the intersection of landscape, politics, and collective memory, blending documentary and experimental fiction to elevate historical events. At the heart of the screening is Gürcan Keltek’s Meteors, exploring suppressed narratives from a critical moment in the ongoing Kurdish-Turkish conflict, through which a concurrent meteor shower takes on mythic significance. Framing Meteors are Ali Cherri’s The Watchman and An-My Lê’s 29 Palms, which bring complementary perspectives on the themes of native land and the haunting echoes of history. Across these films, the question arises: can we ever truly return to our origins, or are we confined to revisiting them through reenactments and cosmic reflections? This screening is guest-curated by Aslı Baykal.

Gürcan Keltek, Meteors (2017, 81 minutes)
They come at night. Everyone steps out of their homes. They light torches and remember those who have walked these streets before them. In the next few hours, the city is on lockdown and an eclipse appears. At night, meteors start to fall. Blending documentary filmmaking and political commentary, and connecting the earthly to the cosmos, Meteors is a film about memory and disappearance—of people, places, and things.

Ali Cherri, The Watchman (2023, 24 minutes)
Sergeant Bulut spends his nights in a watchtower, waiting for an enemy who never arrives—until strange lights suddenly appear on the horizon. Shot with extreme precision of vision and sound, The Watchman deconstructs the myth of duty, laying bare the absurdity of the omnipresent war rhetoric.

An-My Lê, 29 Palms (2005, 7 minutes)
An-My Lê’s 29 Palms explores the desert terrain near Joshua Tree National Park, repurposed as a training site for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Extending her photographic practice into video, Lê navigates the space between documentary and staged photography, investigating the gap between historical events of war and their portrayal in modern media, politics, and cultural awareness.

For more information, contact [email protected].

Accessibility
– Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.
– For elevator access, please RSVP to [email protected]. The building has a freight elevator near 180 Classon Ave (a garage door) leading into the e-flux office space. We have a ramp for the steps within the space.
– e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom with no steps between the event space and this bathroom.

Host or Publisher e-flux Screening Room