Part of Currents Program 5: The Material Ghost at 64th New York Film Festival
This program includes Peggy Ahwesh’s The Wayfinders, Kevin Jerome Everson’s National Seating, the world premiere of Adam Piron’s The Flesh of the Mountain, and Bani Khoshnoudi’s Elegy for the Forgotten, On an Endless War.
The Wayfinders
Peggy Ahwesh, 2026, U.S., 26m
U.S. Premiere
The uncanny landscapes of Lebanon, Syria, and occupied Palestine provide the setting for The Wayfinders, which turns a 2004 3D flight simulation program into a rumination upon themes of loss, displacement, and the right of return. Combining otherworldly tropospheric excursions with evocative narration, Peggy Ahwesh offers a virtual tour of vanished spaces and expunged histories via simulacra of the now-defunct Jerusalem International Airport, once a hub for air travel and mobility throughout a region now ravaged by war, tight border control, and forced departures.
National Seating
Kevin Jerome Everson, 2026, U.S., 5m
New York Premiere
On the soundtrack of National Seating, Pleas Everson Sr. narrates the history of his many jobs—farming, bus-driving, washing cars, army service, factory work, truck-driving—while the camera explores the beat-up interior and exterior of a 1951 GMC school bus. Taking its title from National Seat, the factory where Pleas worked for 18 years, Kevin Jerome Everson’s film moves from the micro to the macro, connecting one man’s private work history to larger questions of labor, the body, time, and employment—first in detailed close-up, then in unstable stereoscope.
The Flesh of the Mountain
Adam Piron, 2026, U.S., 12m
World Premiere
The ragged, desolate landscapes around eastern California’s Owens Lake are rendered in negative monochrome in the latest entry in Adam Piron’s film cycle about the brutal history of Indigenous land expropriation in the American West. Deploying images from Thomas Edison’s 1894 films of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, The Flesh of the Mountain recounts the violent legacy of white settlers’ claim upon Paiute lands for the mining of silver—an essential component of motion-picture film.
Elegy for the Forgotten, On an Endless War / مرثیهای برای فراموششدگان، در باب جنگی بیپایان
Bani Khoshnoudi, 2026, Iran/France, 23m
Farsi with English subtitles
North American Premiere
“An Endless War of Images.” Bani Khoshnoudi juxtaposes photographic testimonials and propaganda from the Iran-Iraq War with ordinary Iranians’ cellphone videos of this year’s government crackdown and subsequent American and Israeli bombardments. The often graphic images of bombed-out streets, dead bodies, and mourners are dizzying in their pain, and in their confusion: with barely any way to distinguish one conflict from another, truth becomes as elusive as justice.
Mon, Sep 28 - 9:30pm - Q&A with Peggy Ahwesh, Adam Piron, and Bani Khoshnoudi
Wed, Sep 30 - 4:00pm - Q&A with Peggy Ahwesh, Adam Piron, and Bani Khoshnoudi