WHAT WE LEFT UNFINISHED is a long-term research, film, exhibition and book project centered around five unfinished Afghan feature films shot, but never edited, between 1978 and 1992: years that encompass the Afghan Communist coup d’état, attempted reforms that met bitter rural resistance, a series of internal purges and assassinations, the Soviet invasion and withdrawal, a five-year attempt at national reconciliation, the handover of power to a mujahidin coalition, and finally dissolution into civil war. From the unfinished films commissioned, produced and canceled by various iterations of the Afghan state, in various moments of the Afghan Communist project, we can reconstruct not the truths, precisely, of how the state existed and acted in those moments, but rather its most important fictions: its desires and fears, ambitions and ghosts. In the imaginary presented by most finished films of the period, we see the ideal People’s Democratic Republic that could have been, but wasn’t; in the unfinished films, the reality – a utopian project secured by violent force – lingers like a shadow, just barely concealed behind allegories and codes. The world around the films, where filmmaking itself was a dangerous enterprise, seeps into the world onscreen.
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.
