Anthology Film Archives

Film Screenings / Programs / Series

PERFORMA PRESENTS: OCCASIONALLY HUMANE

July 22 – August 17

July 22-24 & August 14-17, 2025

The films in “Occasionally Humane” explore the less-expected dimensions of immigration. Rather than focusing on endless paperwork or harrowing journeys, they trouble the script. Longing, refusal, pleasure, and absurdity – these aren’t detours from the immigration story but the story itself.
 
Take Julio Torres’s surrealist comedy PROBLEMISTA (2024), which follows a Salvadoran toy designer trying to keep his visa after being fired from a cryogenics company. Or Oscar Molina’s LA CASA DE MAMA ICHA (2021), with its story of a matriarch’s slow return to Colombia decades later. Both films stretch time’s elasticity, pulling the frame away from procedure toward something more disobedient, more human.
 
What emerges is a choreography of migration shaped by power, perception, and the quiet terror of bureaucracy. But people don’t always know the steps – or wish to follow them. In NEWS FROM HOME (1977), Chantal Akerman’s mother pleads for letters from New York, worrying over the city’s inhumanity. THE OTHER SIDE OF HOPE (2017) captures the awkwardness of arrival, where life continues, but sideways. TOUKI BOUKI (1973) ends in refusal, with Mory choosing fantasy over departure.
 
When immigration dominates headlines, it’s too often reduced to burden or invasion. “Occasionally Humane” resists this frame. It asks: If immigration is a stage, who are the actors? What does it mean to refuse the script? Who gets to walk off mid-scene? These films give us exits and entrances, showing people navigating systems of visibility, expectation, and demand – sometimes by playing along, sometimes by abandoning the script entirely.

This series is presented by Performa, and has been guest-programmed by Performa’s Ikechukwu Onyewuenyi, Curator and Manager of Curatorial Affairs, and Josefina Barcia, Hartwig Foundation Curatorial Fellow.

Founded in 2004 by art historian and curator RoseLee Goldberg, Performa has expanded the possibilities for visual artists working in performance, providing essential curatorial and production support, and, with its dedicated biennial, providing a worldwide platform for performance of the 21st century. Since 2005, Performa has presented ten editions of its three-week international Performa Biennial that have animated NYC every other year. For more info and further online screenings visit: www.Performa-arts.org 

Upcoming Screenings

< Back to Series