A Moon For My Father wins NEW:VISION AWARD at CPH:DOX 2019
After its world premiere at CPH:DOX, A MOON FOR MY FATHER has been awarded the NEW:VISION AWARD.
The winner of NEW:VISION AWARD 2019 is Iranian Mania Akbari and British Douglas White’s raw and performative video work ‘A Moon for My Father’, which held its world premiere at the festival. On their motivation, the jury says:
“‘A Moon For My Father’ is a complex and generous film about bodies. Bodies of work, bodies of politics and history – an extraordinary artist’s body as host of disease and transformation under pressure – and as the subsequent carrier and giver of life.
Like a punch in the gut or a needle in the abdomen, this film demonstrates that as a viewer, the medium of moving images is far more than a retinal and cognitive experience, but one of strong affect and of somatic involvement of your very own body.”
Mania Akbari’s own body is the primary medium and material in her and Douglas White’s raw and courageous film, which with a performative and sculptural materiality documents – and reflects upon – Akbari’s experience with breast cancer, and since then with pregnancy. Akbaris connects her own body to Iran’s political history, and examines the traumas of both as she lives through her illness. Life, death, language, censorship and the artistic process – the abstract suddenly becomes concrete in the face of the possible ending of life, and the beginning of a new life.
The NEW:VISION jury consisted of British artist Ed Atkins, American curator and producer Lauren Boyle and Danish artist Mathias Kryger. The 15 nominated films in the NEW:VISION competition features experiments in the borderland between documentary and artistic reflection.