Films
Square Stories Trilogy (2019)
On three simultaneous screens, in three parts, the Square Stories Trilogy showcases the transformation of Maskal Square, the only major public square in the country designed for the performance of social and political power, an ever-evolving locus where past and present collide.
Square Stories Too (2014)
The second of a trilogy, Square Stories Too is a three channel video installation that graphically and poetically presents Ethiopia's struggle for modernity by juxtaposing ancient practices with twenty first century aspirations.
Square Stories (2010)
Maskal Square (Revolution Square, “The Square”), located in the center of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, is a massive concrete expanse framed by permanent bleachers. It is the lowest point in Addis Ababa: everything cascades into The Square. Everything big that happens in the city takes place there.
IMAGinING TOBIA (2006, 2007)
A triptych video installation synchronized to present vivid images of the Ethiopian cultural and physical landscapes. As an Ethiopian-American I examine my own gaze on my native land as I take in impressions of the variety and diversity of the landscape and its people.
RUPTURES (2003, 2005)
RUPTURES is a triptych video installation that frames the recent political history of Ethiopia from a personal point of view placing it within the multi-faceted geographic, social and cultural history of the nation. It is designed to provide viewers a close-up experience of this history as they stand before and move about the images.
YE WONZ MAIBEL: Deluge (1997)
YE WONZ MAIBEL: DELUGE is a personal visual meditation on history, conflict and the roads to reconciliation. It is a tale of love and betrayal, of idealism and the lure of power. It is a memorial to a brother who disappeared and a best friend, executed. It is a story of the Ethiopian students, their “Revolution” and its aftermath – a brutal military dictatorship.
SIDET: Forced Exile (1991)
SIDET: Forced Exile is a 60-minute documentary film profiling the personal odyssey of three Ethiopian women refugees in the Sudan. By constructing “SIDET” as individual portraits, with the women narrating their own stories, it captures the complexity of the experience of exile, especially in a Third World context.
AS I REMEMBER IT: A Portrait of Dorothy West
(1991)
AS I REMEMBER IT: Portrait of Dorothy West Portrait of Dorothy West, is the story of an “upper crust” African American woman who became a published writer in the 1920′s.
Our Place in the Sun (1998)
OUR PLACE IN THE SUN is a thirty-minute retrospective documentary that reveals the unique but hidden history of Martha’s Vineyard Island off the coast of Massachusetts, tracing the establishment of the Black community from the 1700′s to the present.