Columbia University in the City of New York Film and Media Studies presents Afterlives with writer-director Kevin B. Lee.
About the Film
Afterlives (2025, 88 min) is a desktop documentary that traces the historical and digital afterlives of extremist propaganda, asking how images of violence circulate, mutate, and persist long after their creation. The film moves between virtual investigations and real-world encounters with artists, activists, and researchers who seek to resist the toxic effects of such media.
At its center is the figure of Medusa; a victim of violence whose gaze turned viewers to stone, invoked here as a symbol of both the dangers and the transformative potential of looking. From museum archives to AI-generated reconstructions, the film explores how power structures, spanning from the colonial past to the digital age, shape the way we see and remember violence.
Can we ever truly look without being complicit? And is there another way to care?
Awards:
Doclisboa International Film Festival 2025, Best First Feature Award
BFI London Film Festival, Stockholm International Film Festival
Milano Filmmaker Festival, Busto Arsizio Film Festival
About Kevin B. Lee
Kevin B. Lee is a filmmaker and educator who has produced over 360 video essays exploring film and media. His work has screened at the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of the Moving Image, and International Film Festival Rotterdam, and has appeared on platforms including The New York Times and MUBI. His award-winning Transformers: The Premake introduced the "desktop documentary" format and was named one of the best documentaries of 2014 by Sight & Sound. He is the Locarno Film Festival Professor for the Future of Cinema and the Audiovisual Arts at Università della Svizzera italiana (USI).
About the Host
Behrang Garakani is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Film and Media at Columbia University and Head of Technology at the Whitney Museum of American Art. He teaches courses in video essays, coding, and AI.
Content Note
Afterlives engages directly with extremist propaganda, including ISIS recruitment and execution videos, as well as the destruction of cultural heritage sites. While the film approaches this material critically and thoughtfully, some viewers may find portions of the content distressing.
Registration
Non-Columbia ID Holders: please write to Leon Li ([email protected]) to arrange access to campus.
