In her captivating film, artist Alexandra Gulea knits together the life of her grandmother Maia (whose life Gulea dates backwards to 1999–1905) with the history of the Aromanians, a Balkan ethnic group subjected to displacement and cultural suppression during early 20th-century nationalist conflicts. Through a collage of carefully composed cinematic tableaux, archival footage, photographs, puppetry, drawings, and performative ‘re-incarnations,’ the film results in an extraordinarily layered portrait that is both deeply personal and historical. Dress emerges as one of Gulea’s central motifs. A red bridal gown with a five-meter train represents Maia's resistance to marriage customarily arranged by Aromanian women and translucent men's suits that move in the wind evoke the death by hanging of Gulea’s great-grandfather and other relatives. Elsewhere, an inherited velvet dress is seen drifting through the landscapes the Aromanians once traversed from the Black Sea to Bucharest. As Gulea notes: ‘The velvet dress is borne like a spectre. The landscapes in the film, in all their vastness and diversity, bear witness to Maia’s passage through these lands. Waters, mountains, trees – all have known her, all have absorbed her suffering.’

Artist Alexandra Gulea will be in conversation after the screening.