Genre
Synopsis
DIS-EASE dives deep into the weird, wild archives of medical imaging, public health messaging, and pop-culture outbreak narratives to understand how ideas about disease have moved between science, science fiction, and political ideology over the past century. Based on six years of archival research and interviews with 26 scholars, journalists, scientists, activists, and doctors, the film draws from global health histories spanning the late 19th century to the present. Ultimately, DIS-EASE is a provocation to re-think how we define both the "public" and "health" in public health - who is included, what counts as care, and what it means to be sick or well in a world perpetually on the brink of collapse.
Bio
Mariam Ghani directs, edits and produces short and feature films, multiple-channel installations, transmedia projects, and live cinema events. She is also known for her work in the visual arts, collaborations with choreographers and composers, and intensive archival research. Ghani’s films and installations have been presented and collected by museums, festivals, and biennials across the US, UK, Europe, Asia and the Middle East since 2002. Her transmedia work has been covered by Fast Company and the Guardian and preserved by the Rhizome ArtBase. Her critical writing has been published in e-Flux, Filmmaker, Foreign Policy, Frieze, the NYRB, and a number of anthologies. Recent honors include a Creative Capital Award, a Changemaker Award from the Center for Constitutional Rights, a residency at Yale Law, and a fellowship at the NYPL. Ghani’s first feature, the documentary What We Left Unfinished, is about five unfinished films from the Communist period in Afghanistan, premiered at the 2019 Berlinale, and is on its festival run. She is working with Afghanistan’s national archive to restore and subtitle finished films from the period for distribution alongside her film. Ghani is currently in post on the feature doc Dis-Ease, about the consequences of a century-plus of waging metaphorical war on disease, and is consulting producer for a four-part German TV doc about 20th-century Afghan history. She teaches film/video at Bennington College and lectures internationally.
Screening History
Premiere - BlackStar Film Festival 2024
Tate Modern 2024
Credits
Executive Producer - Alysa Nahmias
Consulting Producer - Wendy Ettinger
Score - Qasim Naqvi