Eric Baudelaire: Also Known As Jihadi

Artist Eric Baudelaire joins us to present the UK premiere of his feature film Also Known As Jihadi, followed by a discussion and Q&A.

Produced in the wake of the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, the film traces the journey and trial of a young man from the suburbs of Paris who travelled via Egypt to Syria to join the Al-Nusra Front (al-Qaeda). The subject’s path to radicalism is explored both through judicial transcripts and through a series of landscape shots filmed at the locations traversed by the subject: a biography determined not by what the subject did, but by what the subject saw. In this way, Baudelaire’s film positions itself as both a remake and a test of the landscape theory proposed by Japanese filmmaker Masao Adachi in his 1969 masterpiece A.K.A. Serial Killer, questioning how these landscapes reflect the social and political structures that form the backdrop for this journey of alienation and return.

Eric Baudelaire Also Known as Jihadi, France 2017, DCP, colour, sound, 99 min, French with English subtitles

The screening is followed by a discussion with Eric Baudelaire, Morad Montazami (Adjunct Research Curator, Middle East), Andrea Lissoni (Senior Curator, International Art – Film) and Carly Whitefield (Assistant Curator, Film) as well as an audience Q&A.

Eric Baudelaire

Eric Baudelaire (b.1973, United States) is a Paris-based artist and filmmaker whose films have screened at FIDMarseille, Locarno, Toronto, New York and Rotterdam film festivals. His research-based practice includes printmaking, photography and publication, which have been shown in installations alongside his films in solo exhibitions at Centre Pompidou, Paris; Witte de With, Rotterdam; Fridericianum, Kassel; Bétonsalon, Paris; Bergen Kunsthall; Beirut Art Center; Gasworks, London; and The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. He has participated in the Seoul Biennal; Yokohama Triennal; Taipei Biennial; Berlin Documentary Forum 2; La Triennale, Paris; and the Baltic Triennial, Vilnius.