Thursday, May 7, 2020 7:00 PM Madison Square Park Between Fifth & Madison Avenues between 23rd & 26th Streets

ARC is delighted to co-host the screening of documentary film Midnight Traveler with Madison Square Park Conservancy on Thursday, May 7, 2020. The screening complements Krzysztof Wodiczko’s Monument, a public art piece currently on display in Madison Square Park. For the piece, the artist collaborated with twelve refugees who have been resettled in the United States. Their filmed likeness and spoken narratives are superimposed on the 1881 monument to Admiral David Glasgow Farragut, a Union naval hero during the Civil War, in the park. The twenty-five minute video projection encourages viewers to consider how history is memorialized. Midnight Traveler follows director Hassan Fazili, his wife and fellow filmmaker Fatima Hussaini, and their children as they flee their home in Kabul, Afghanistan. In 2015, after Hassan Fazili’s documentary Peace in Afghanistan aired on Afghan national television, the Taliban assassinated the film’s main subject and put a price on Fazili’s head. Fearing for their survival, the Fazili family fled Kabul for Tajikistan. Yet after 14 months spent submitting asylum applications that were rejected again and again, they were deported back to Afghanistan. It was at this juncture that Fazili picked up his cell phone and hit the record button. The film follows the family as they trek across Iran, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Serbia—scurrying through perilous landscapes, huddling in freezing forests, cramming into rattling vehicles.

Monument is on view through May 10, 2020 and runs from 5 to 8 PM, Monday to Saturday. The rain date is May 8, 2020.