Assaf Gruber
Miraculous Accident (2024)
Commissioned work
Courtesy of the artist
Dates
20.9.2024–16.2.2025
Details
4K video, stereo sound, 30 min.
Location
Neue Galerie Graz, Graz
Part of
Horror Patriae: Exhibition
Production specifics
In Auftrag gegeben von steirischer herbst ʼ24
Produziert von steirischer herbst ʼ24, CASKFILMS und Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW)
Künstlerische Forschung in Auftrag gegeben vom Berliner Programm Künstlerische Forschung
Mit freundlicher Unterstützung von Artis
Assaf Gruber’s newly commissioned film tackles the timely topic of “the enemy” in Europe—between the Arab and the Jew—from a Cold War, Eastern perspective. It imagines a potential microhistory at the Łódź Film School in 1968. That year, North African students were invited to attend film academies across the Soviet Bloc. Concurrently, following the 1968 political crisis in Poland, Jewish teachers and thinkers were forced into exile.
Miraculous Accident tells the story of Nadir, a twenty-five-year-old Moroccan student who arrives in Łódź. There, he is taught editing by Edyta, a Jewish woman in her forties, with whom he falls in love. In 2024, Nadir returns to the school to create his final film about his relationship with Edyta, who has since passed away. The plot is inspired by the life of renowned Moroccan poet and filmmaker Abdelkader Lagtaâ (born 1948), who plays Nadir. Interweaving actual student films from the 1960s and 1970s by Lagtaâ and his peers, the narrative merges past and present.
Retrospective
Retrospective