Film Screening:  5:30-7pm, Communications 150, Studio C
Panel Discussion and Audience Q&A:  7-8pm, Communications 150, Studio C
Reception:  8-9pm, Communications 139

Marking the centenary of Frantz Fanon’s birth, the Center for Middle East and North Africa is hosting a film screening of True Chronicles of the Blida Joinville Psychiatric Hospital, the recent film by Algerian director Abdenour Zahzah that focuses on his time in the psychiatric hospital in Blida, Algeria. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with Meryem Belkaïd (Bowdoin College), Isaac Julien (UCSC), and Mark Nash (UCSC) on the representation of Fanon’s work and life in film, from Julien and Nash’s classic 1998 documentary, Black Skin White Masks, to more recent films that focus on how Fanon’s time in Algeria shaped his intellectual and political commitments.

Meryem Belkaïd is the Harriet Sara Walker and Mary Sophia Walker Associate Professor of Humanities at Bowdoin College. Trained in both literature (PhD from La Sorbonne) and political science (Master degree from Science Po, Paris), her research focuses on a decolonial approach of North African cinema and literature. She is the author of From Outlaw to Rebel: Contemporary documentary in Contemporary Algeria (Palgrave 2023). Her works have appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as Journal of North African Studies, Fixxion and Expressions maghrébines. She is a regular contributor of the online magazine Orient XXI.

Mark Nash is a distinguished independent curator, film historian, and filmmaker with a specialization in contemporary fine art moving image practices, avant-garde, and world cinema. He holds a PhD from Middlesex University and an MA from Cambridge University. He is a professor in History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz, where he founded the Isaac Julien Lab with his partner and long-time collaborator, Isaac Julien. His most recent publication, Curating the Moving Image (Duke UP, 2023), outlines several key concepts that range from exhibition architecture and curating as an affective and artistic practice to post-cold war aesthetics and contemporary Chinese art.

Isaac Julien is a filmmaker and installation artist who has been making films and producing film installations for over forty years. Recent works include All that Changes You. Metamorphosis (2025), Once Again… (Statues Never Die) (2022), Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement (2019), and Lessons of the Hour – Frederick Douglass (2019). A retrospective of his work, Isaac Julien: I Dream a World, was exhibited at the De Young Museum in 2025. In 2018, Julien joined the faculty at the UC Santa Cruz where he is a Distinguished Professor of the Arts and Humanities and leads the Moving Image Lab together with Mark Nash. Julien is the recipient of The Royal Academy of Arts Charles Wollaston Award in 2017. In 2022, he was awarded a Kaiserring Goslar Award in 2022, and he was granted a knighthood as part of the Queen’s Honours List.

Parking Info:

This is the Communications Building on Google maps, and this is a map with parking information: https://transportation.ucsc.edu/parking/campus-parking-map/#interactive-map. Park Mobile parking spots can be located in lot 139A. Alternative parking options include the Core West parking structure, which is located down the hill from the Communications Building.

Presented by the Center for the Middle East and North Africa and co-sponsored by the Film and Digital Media Department.