Ethiopian filmmaker discusses migration cinema

Italy-based Ethiopian film director Dagmawi Yimer, a critical figure in migration cinema, Italian independent film, and participatory cinema work, will visit the UO April 28–May 1, 2025. He will visit Eleanor Paynter’s class ITAL 399 Mediating Media and conduct a filmmaking workshop for students. A public screening of his short film Waiting will take place on Wednesday, April 30, 2025 at 4 p.m. in the EMU Crater Lake South room and will be followed by a discussion about migration cinema and theorizing through film. Waiting (2020) is an experimental film that explores the theme of waiting through self-representative testimonies of two refugees in Europe: Professor Sharham Koshravi, originally from Iran, and Salif Keita, a schoolteacher from Burkina Faso.

After leaving Ethiopia in 2005 due to political unrest, Yimer crossed the Libyan desert and Mediterranean Sea before reaching the Italian island of Lampedusa on July 30, 2006.

Following a video-making workshop in Rome, Yimer co-authored Il deserto e il mare (The Desert and the Sea) with five other refugees. His acclaimed works include the award-winning documentary Come un uomo sulla terra (Like a Man on Earth, 2008), C.A.R.A. ITALIA (Dear Italy, 2009) and Soltanto il mare (Nothing but the Sea, 2011). He coordinated the collective film project Benvenuti in Italia (Welcome to Italy) and directed Va’ pensiero (Walking Stories, 2013), which interweaves accounts of racist attacks in Milan and Florence. His 2015 short film Asmat (Names) commemorates migrant lives lost at sea.

Yimer is co-founder and vice president of the Archivio delle Memorie Migranti (Migrant Memory Archive) in Rome. He has taught cinema and migration at the University of Venice and various schools. 

Yimer’s campus visit, a prelude to the “Gender, Race, and Empire” symposium is cosponsored by the OHC’s Endowment for Public Outreach in the Arts, Sciences, and Humanities. For more information contact Eleanor Paynter, Assistant Professor of Italian, Migration, and Global Media Studies: epaynter@uoregon.edu