Seaview (2015) is an experimental film which combines home video and captured footage from Karachi, Pakistan. Naqvi travels back to her family’s country of origin to compare childhood memories of this place with lived experience. In the first sequence, she shows video footage of her first trip to Clifton Beach in Karachi. The accompanying text describes her visit to the same beach seventeen years later, and the difficulties in trying to document this place, both as an image maker and as a woman.
Naqvi was originally inspired by the practice of traditional documentary photographers, who set out to create ethnographic studies of the East, beginning in the mid-19th Century. Later she came to realize the Orientalist nature of this practice, which simplified Eastern culture into one nondescript entity. In this film Naqvi questions the ability of any single medium in giving a just depiction of a place or culture.
Naqvi confronts her own personal struggle of being caught between the ideals of Western and Eastern societies. Rather than affirming any single understanding of Pakistani society, she constantly complicates her own depiction by questioning the relationship between subject, author and viewer. She overlaps text, audio conversations, and testimonials which often contradict the paired imagery in each sequence. This film attempts to reveal the complications and hostilities of translating culture across time and seas.
For access to the full film please inquire via email. HD Video 11min 59s.
