re:assemblage collective

The Retreat

Directed by Gelare Khoshgozaran
France/UK/USA · 2023 · 22'00

Exile as a space for transnational solidarity is explored through a discursive, community-oriented process of production centred around a retreat in the south of France. An international group of participants with distinct but shared experiences of displacement come together to find common language. Fragments of conversation are laced together with dream-like sequences reflecting on the connections between exile, mental health, and modes of antifascist praxis.

Gelare Khoshgozaran is an undisciplinary artist and filmmaker whose work engages with the legacies of imperial violence manifested in war, militarization and borders. They use film and video to construct peripheral narratives that seek to redefine existing constructions of ‘home’ as a means of approaching new conceptualizations of belonging. Khoshgozaran has presented their work internationally, with recent exhibitions and screenings at MoMA Doc Fortnight, Delfina Foundation, Images Festival, EMPAC, MASS MoCA and the Hammer Museum. With a BA in Photography from University of Arts in Tehran (2009), and an MFA from University of Southern California (2011), they are a co-editor of MARCH: a journal of art and strategy, and an editorial board member at X-TRA Contemporary Art Journal. They are assistant professor of art at UCLA School of Art and Architecture. [↗]