Out of the Archive: A Global Lens
Arrive hungry at 6:15pm for a pre-screening meal | Post-screening discussion
Ezra Wube (born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) is a cross-disciplinary artist who lives and works in New York. His works encompass video, drawing, painting, and installations that explore experiences of mobility, the malleability of time and place, and the dialogical tensions between "here" and "there"—a confluence of prior and current influences on social idealism, pluralism, and autonomy. This program highlights Wube's climate change/ecological works through a survey of stop-motion animated film.
PROJECT ECOPOLIS (2024, USA, Ethiopia, 11min.) Dir. Ezra Wube
Using paintings, collage, objects, and paper cutouts that narrate scenes of daily urban life across Brooklyn, Addis Ababa, and other cities around the world, artist Ezra Wube creates a lively mixed media animation. Mixing audio recordings of the clamoring sounds of the places he profiles with shifting, cumulative collages, Wube brings to the fore the spirit of different locations, continuing his ongoing exploration of how we conceive of and exist within our cities and green spaces.
POSSIBLE WORLD (2021, Ethiopia, Germany, 4 min.) Dir. Ezra Wube
This painted animation is inspired by interviews conducted with over 100 everyday individuals across Ethiopia. A series of beautiful and dynamic scenes bring to life the subjects’ dreams for a regenerative world, starting with existing practices that benefit both communities and the environment—a collective vision as a model for our shared future.
THE ANTHROPOCENE COMEDY (2022, USA, 30 min.) Dir. Ezra Wube
Using Dante Alighieri's Inferno from The Divine Comedy as the basis for this incredibly layered and astonishing animated piece, paint is used to tell a catastrophic narrative about the environment.
HIDIRTINA/SISTERS (2018, USA, Eritrea, Ethiopia, 9 min.) Dir. Ezra Wube
Based on mythology from Eritrea and northern Ethiopia, this film tells the story of a hunter who falls in love with one of the Hidirtina, a group of seven immortal sisters believed to live harmoniously in nature among wild animals, only visible to humans on rare occasions. But when he disobeys another sister during a deer hunt, he must follow his beloved's advice or suffer the wrath of the ecosystem he has violated.
Still from The Anthropocene Comedy
