DIS-EASE is a documentary about how we imagine disease, and how that affects what we do when we encounter outbreaks, treatments, doctors, sick people, and disability in real life.
DIS-EASE dives deep into the weird, wild archives of medical imaging, public health messaging, and pop-culture outbreak narratives to understand how ideas about disease have moved between science, science fiction, and political ideology over the past century. Based on six years of archival research and interviews with 26 scholars, journalists, scientists, activists, and doctors, the film draws from global health histories spanning the late 19th century to the present. Ultimately, DIS-EASE is a provocation to re-think how we define both the "public" and "health" in public health - who is included, what counts as care, and what it means to be sick or well in a world perpetually on the brink of collapse.
Mariam Ghani is a writer, director, editor, producer, archival researcher, and visual artist. Her short films, public projects, and multi-channel installations have been presented and collected worldwide, notably in Times Square and the new Terminal C at LaGuardia Airport; the Guggenheim, MoMA, Smithsonian, and Metropolitan Museums; Documenta 13 and the Liverpool, Lahore, Yinchuan, and Sharjah Biennials; and the Rotterdam, CPH:DOX, SFFILM, DOC NYC, and Ann Arbor film festivals, where she presented a juror's retrospective in 2022.
Ghani’s first feature, the critically acclaimed documentary WHAT WE LEFT UNFINISHED, tells the mostly true story of five unfinished Afghan Communist films. It premiered at the 2019 Berlinale, was released theatrically in the US, and had its streaming premiere on the Criterion Channel. It is distributed by Dekanalog, Good Docs, and Arsenal, and is currently streaming on Docuseek and Ovid. Her 2022 short THE FIRE THIS TIME was commissioned by Field of Vision and screened at BlackStar, BAMcinemaFest and Ji.hlava. Her second feature film, DIS-EASE, looks at the real consequences of how we fictionalize illness, and premiered at BlackStar and the Tate Modern in 2024. Ghani teaches film/video at Bennington College.
Premiere - BlackStar Film Festival 2024
UK Premiere - Tate Modern 2024
Executive Producer - Alysa Nahmias
Consulting Producer - Wendy Ettinger
Score - Qasim Naqvi
