Wazhmah Osman on Autoethnography and Afghan Documentary Film

How can we tell a story that is ours but also belongs to millions of others? How can documentaryfilm and engaged scholarshipportray the realities of war?

In episode 22 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, host Cathy Hannabach interviews filmmaker Wazhmah Osman about the politics of memoir, what the trauma of war does to archival research, and Wazhmah’s critically acclaimed documentary film, Postcards from Tora Bora, which recounts Wazhmah’sreturn to her childhood home of Kabul, Afghanistan nearly 20 years after her family fled Cold War violence.

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Guest: Wazhmah Osman

Wazhmah Osman is a filmmaker and an assistant professor in the Department of Media Studies and Production at Temple University.

For the 2016–2017 academic year, she is a visiting fellow at New York University’s Center for Media, Culture, and History.

Her research focuses on the politics of representation and visual culture of the war on terror, and in her forthcoming book she analyzes the impact of international funding and cross border media flows on the national politics and culture of Afghanistan.

Her critically acclaimed documentary film Postcards from Tora Bora traces Wazhmah’s return to her childhood home of Kabul, Afghanistan nearly 20 years after her family fled Cold War violence. In the film, armed only with rapidly fading memories, Wazhmah recruits some unlikely and reluctant guides to put together the pieces of her past. On an alternately sad and humorous quest, she encounters confused cabbies, the enthusiastic former minister of the tourism bureau, a museum director that archives land mines, and a group of angry street vendors. As she talks about in our interview, the film depicts a strange intersection where cultures clash, identities are mistaken, and the past violently collides with the present.

Wazhmah Osman on Autoethnography and Afghan Documentary Film - Ideas on Fire (1)

We chatted about

The evolution of Postcards from Tora Bora from traditional documentary to a more experimental narrative film(03:30)
National and personal archives in the context of war (09:15)
Finding a balance between objectivity and personal emotions in autobiographical work(16:00)
How to tell a story that is yours but is also shared by other people (20:20)
Combining filmmakingwith political activism and academic training(23:00)
The importance of ethnographic interviews to a democratic media (30:15)
Imagining otherwise (38:30)

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Takeaways

The destruction of personal and national archives

The loss of all kinds of things happens, from human life that disrupts families, to all kinds of cultural and national institutions that people have spent generations building up are in many cases burned or bombed or destroyed to build a new kind of post-war culture.

The experimental nature of her film

It was a difficult experience for me because it was uncomfortable. I had to go from being more of the filmmaker to being the subject of the film. It became like an inter-referential, reflective kind of film.

Balancing objective and narrative work

We have to keep a distance from the subject matter, be objective, be critical, and rationally analyze the pieces. If you’re too stepped in the subject matter, it’s difficult to keep that objective distance and analytical mindset, but you have to feel it first.

I wanted to be sure the story wasn’t just going to be representative of my family’s story, but that other Afghans could relate to it as well. 50 percent of the population has become refugees, and if you include internal displacement, it’s three quarters of the country.

The development of activism

If you’ve experienced the injustices of war, there’s no way that you can be pro-war, or not call out when you see warlordism or war hawks today drumming up the beats of anger and rage and racism so that they can muster more war.

Ethnographic interviews

Ethnographic interviews are very relevant if you want to get at the beat and pulse of a country. If you have good interview skills and you’re building relationships with people and they trust you, then they share from the heart.

Imagining otherwise

We the people who don’t have capital and power and powerful institutions on our side, [must] realize what we do have on our side is each other, and that we’re going to build alliances across races and genders and sexualities and nationalities and fight for one another.

Projects and people discussed

About Imagine Otherwise

ImagineOtherwise is a podcast about the people and projects bridging art, activism, and academia to build better worlds. Episodes offer in-depth interviews with creators who use culture for social justice, and explore the nitty-gritty work of imagining and creating more just worlds. Check out fullpodcast episodes and show notesat ideasonfire.net/imagine-otherwise-podcast. Imagine Otherwise hosted by Cathy Hannabach and is produced by Ideas on Fire, an academic editing and consulting agency helping progressive, interdisciplinary scholars write and publish awesome texts, enliven public conversations, and create more just worlds.

Transcript

Cathy Hannabach (00:03):

Welcome to Imagine Otherwise, the podcast about the people andprojects bridging art, activism, and academia to build a better world. Episodesoffer in-depth interviews with creators who use culture for social justice, andexplore the nitty-gritty work of imagining otherwise.

Cathy Hannabach (00:19):

I’m your host, Cathy Hannabach.

Cathy Hannabach (00:23):

Welcome to the Imagine Otherwise podcast, which is produced by Ideason Fire, an academic editing and consulting agency helping progressiveinterdisciplinary scholars write awesome text, enliven public conversations,and create more just worlds. This episode is brought to you by our brand newhot off the press publication called Book Marketing for Academics.

Cathy Hannabach (00:45):

As I’ve talked a little bit about on this podcast before, at Ideas onFire, we help academic authors map out, propose, write, edit, publish, andmarket their scholarly books. And over the years, I’ve had dozens of clientsand friends and colleagues and other super-smart people who have told me thatthey struggle with how to market their academic books, or if they should evenbe doing so at all.

Cathy Hannabach (01:10):

They’ve written these amazing feminist, queer, anti-racist, socialjustice-oriented books, but they don’t know how to let people know about them.Their publishers encourage them to do book marketing, but don’t offer muchpractical guidance for what that actually means or how to do it.

Cathy Hannabach (01:27):

So I took the advice templates, worksheets, and resources that I’vebeen giving to folks over the years and bundled them into this book. You canget your copy of Book Marketing for Academics on our website atIdeasOnFire.net. This is episode 22.

Cathy Hannabach (01:43):

My guest today is Wazhmah Osman, who’s a filmmaker and an assistantprofessor in the Department of Media Studies and Production at TempleUniversity. For the 2016/2017 academic year, she’s also a visiting fellow atNew York University’s Center for Media Culture and History. Her researchfocuses on the politics of representation and visual culture in the war onterror.

Cathy Hannabach (02:07):

In her forthcoming book, she analyzes the impact of internationalfunding and cross-border media flows on the national politics and culture ofAfghanistan. Her critically-acclaimed documentary film, Postcards from ToraBora traces Wazhmah’s return to her childhood home of Kabul, Afghanistan nearly20 years after her family fled Cold War violence.

Cathy Hannabach (02:30):

In the film, armed only with rapidly fading memories, Wazhmah recruitssome unlikely and often reluctant guides to help her put together the pieces ofher past. On an alternatively sad and humorous quest, she encounters confusedcabbies, the enthusiastic former minister of the Tourism Bureau, a museumdirector that archives landmines, and a group of angry street vendors. As shetalks about in this interview, the film depicts a strange intersection whereculture clash, identities are mistaken, and the past violently collides withthe present.

Cathy Hannabach (03:08):

So thanks so much for being with us, Wazhmah.

Wazhmah Osman (03:11):

Thanks for having me, Cathy.

Cathy Hannabach (03:14):

So let’s jump in. You are a filmmaker, a scholar, an activist, and thedirector of the critically-acclaimed documentary film, Postcards from ToraBora. I’d love for you to tell our listeners a little bit about that film, theprocess of making it, and how that all came together.

Wazhmah Osman (03:30):

We started the film back in 2004 with my ex-partner who’s also afilmmaker and an academic, and our idea initially was to make more of atraditional documentary to see what the situation of women in Afghanistan wasafter the US intervention post-9/11 because there was so much talk leading tothe build-up of the US military intervention in Afghanistan to oust theTaliban, and one of their main reasons was to liberate Afghan women, so wewanted to see if that was really the case.

Wazhmah Osman (04:21):

But what happened along the way was, Kelly Dolak, the co-director andco-producer of the film, she also was documenting just my personal journey,being back in Afghanistan, which is where I’m originally from and I was bornthere. And we left as refugees when I was a child, so she was documenting allthe more personal experiences I was having returning to my home country in manyways.

Wazhmah Osman (04:58):

And so when we brought the footage back, at that point I was in theculture and media program through NYU Anthropology, and we had test screenings.And also my advisor, Faye Ginsburg, was one of the advisors for the film, andso she helped us organize some test screenings at various differentinstitutions and classrooms, and most people didn’t respond that well to thefootage that we had that was more talking heads documentary style interviewswith women across the population, all different segments of the population,talking about the situation of women there, but most people reacted veryintensely to the personal footage that we had.

Wazhmah Osman (05:54):

And so we shifted directions in going from more of a traditionaldocumentary to more of a personal unconventional genre-bending kind ofdirection, which people responded to well.

Cathy Hannabach (06:12):

Nice. So what was that kind of personal footage or that turn that thefilm took?

Wazhmah Osman (06:22):

I think it was a difficult experience for me because it wasuncomfortable because I had to go from being more of the filmmaker to being thesubject of the film, and Kelly, my ex-partner, is also in the film, so then weboth became … it became an interreferential reflexive kind of film documentingour process of going there and being in Afghanistan and all the emotions thatwere surfacing for me around having to leave as refugees, and also documentingother people’s stories, personal stories, and the different generations ofpeople who’ve experience war.

Wazhmah Osman (07:12):

So I was the first generation who experienced the Cold War with theSoviet invasion of Afghanistan, but since then, there has been multiple otherwars. There’s been a civil war and the rise of the Taliban, and now the war onterror. And so we interviewed many people, including children who’ve beenimpacted and families that have been impacted in terrible ways. And so in manyways, I think the film became more of an experimental film, but also more of anarrative film because it tells the story of what happens to a country that’sonce peaceful and progressive and has all kinds of cultural and artisticinstitutions and also Democratic institutions, and what happens when you have… war doesn’t even begin to … war is a one-word catchall, but what happenswhen a society essentially collapses.

Wazhmah Osman (08:18):

And in that power vacuum, you have extremists and Islamists and allkinds of other people coming into power, and so the loss of … so many thingshappened, from human life that disrupts families to all kinds of cultural andnational institutions that people have spent generations building up areliterally, in many cases, just burnt or bombed or destroyed to bring in a newtype of post-war culture, but I still don’t recognize Afghanistan. But a lot ofactivists are fighting to bring about positive changes again.

Cathy Hannabach (09:11):

One of the kind of main themes of the film or one of the topics thatyou explore a lot is family history and the ways that family history interactswith national history, with cultural history, how it gets all kind of tangledin complicated ways, and how you tell that history when the archival objectsthat normally serve as evidence of that history are gone in the context of war,in the context of just family life, but particularly in the context of war.

Cathy Hannabach (09:46):

How did you track down all of the kind of archival materials that youneeded for the film? Was there stuff that you couldn’t find? Did you haveproblems getting photographs or interviews or transcripts or the kind ofdocuments, visual or text that you needed?

Wazhmah Osman (10:07):

Yeah. No, that question was so well-put and so relevant to the film,and something I always say is for refugees, all refugees, but especially warrefugees and people who have to leave their country almost immediately, thatarchive or having archives is just so crucial, it’s almost … I think myrelationship to archives, personal archives, national archives, is a veryintense and emotional one in many ways, and so I think recreating the pre-war Afghanistan,the happier Afghanistan of my childhood was very difficult, and some of it, Ithink in the film have been … it was just serendipity in that we went to mygrandmother and grandfather’s house, and in one of the rooms there was stillsome boxes. Everything else was stolen, even things like window fixtures andthings like that were stolen or looted over the years, but there was still afew boxes of photographs.

Wazhmah Osman (11:37):

The only things we brought with us, and it was very difficult toescape Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion, but the only thing we broughtwith us was a suitcase of photos, which was subsequently stolen at KarachiAirport en route to coming to the US. And so it was great that we found thesephotographs that I thought after all these years must be burned in thewintertime to keep people warm or something like that.

Wazhmah Osman (12:11):

And then in addition to that, we went to visit an aunt of mine inPakistan and she had old Super 8 films of my mother and my mother and father’swedding, and also when they … so part of my family is Pakistani because along time ago during the … I’m trying to figure out which time it was, butbasically the British divided part of Afghanistan with Pakistan, and so theyused to come to Afghanistan for vacation, so she had these old home movies ofKabul, which they loved to visit because people from around the world used tovisit Kabul because it was one of these cosmopolitan centers that was known forbeing very diverse and rich in culture, and people were very hospitable.

Wazhmah Osman (13:06):

I remember as a child growing up in Kabul, there was all thesehippies. That was actually one of the first English words I learned was hippie.And so they used to come visit and vacation in Kabul, so in those respects, itwas sheer luck that we happened upon the home movies and these photographs. Andthen in addition to that, the now defunct, but semi-functional Ministry of Tourismhad some brochures from the 60s and 70s where they were geared towards touristsfrom all around the world, and so we happened upon those too.

Wazhmah Osman (13:54):

And we used all of these various archives that we had built from thehome movies to photographs to brochures to kind of recreate what had beendestroyed and lost. Yeah, so that’s the story behind that. And I think thatreally added a layered texture to the film that people tend to really enjoy andlike to watch.

Cathy Hannabach (14:24):

So you mentioned the kind of weirdness, or newness at least, offinding yourself part of the story as opposed to the person making the story,in front of the camera instead of behind the camera, and it seems that that issomething that a lot of people who work with autobiographical material wrestlewith. How to tell a story that is yours, but is also shared by other people,particularly when you’re creating material about family.

Cathy Hannabach (14:58):

And several of our previous podcast guests have talked about this, thekind of challenges of that. The pleasures of it for sure, but also thedifficulties of that. I’m thinking of Nikiko Masumoto who talked about makingplays and performances that are about both her personal family histories, butalso how they intertwine with Japanese internment writ large.

Cathy Hannabach (15:22):

Minal Hajratwala wrote a gorgeous memoir about her personal familyhistory and how her family over the decades have moved out from and back intoIndia throughout the Indian diaspora, and she also talked a lot about thedifficulty or the needing to step lightly when talking about family stuff, butalso wanting to offer the kind of critical lens that, as scholars, asfilmmakers, as activists, that you have.

Cathy Hannabach (15:59):

Did you find that particularly challenging, creating a film thatinvolved family stuff?

Wazhmah Osman (16:07):

Yeah. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that to doautobiographical work involves going into a certain uncomfortable zone thatwe’re not used to, especially, I think, if you’re trained in more traditionalways of documentary filmmaking. Or many of the social sciences up untilrecently have trained us, in order to be good scholars or good filmmakers, thatwe have to keep a distance from the subject matter and that we have to beobjective, and that we have to be able to be critical and rationally analyzethe pieces. Because if you’re too much steeped in the subject matter, then it’sdifficult to keep that objective distance and analytical mindset.

Wazhmah Osman (17:15):

And so, I think that was maybe part of why it was hard to all of asudden be on the other side of the camera and be the subject of the film. I hadto relinquish all of that training and sort of just give up that control thatcomes with that too. It also helped that the person that was doing most of thefilmmaking was my partner at the time, so that helped in terms of justreleasing some of the control around that. But you also go into a place ofexploring your emotions around something that’s very difficult.

Wazhmah Osman (18:03):

How does a child rationalize or make sense of war? As an adult, Istill haven’t been able to, but trying to explain to a child, which is whathappened in my family’s case, but to many other families. My father became aprisoner of war, some of my uncles were killed by the Soviet-based regimes thatwere in power. We stopped going to school, we had curfews. The Soviet police aswell as army were patrolling Kabul streets.

Wazhmah Osman (18:49):

And then all of a sudden overnight, my mom and my grandma decide thatwe’re going to leave. So my sisters and I, with my grandmother and my mother,leave everything we know. So it’s an incredible sense of loss, and not beingable to understand. One minute I’m in the first grade and I’m playing with myclassmates and just being a kid, and then the next minute, I remember there wasa bombing raid at our school, and from that point on, it was just one battleafter another battle, and we were hiding in my grandmother’s shelter until wefinally left.

Wazhmah Osman (19:37):

Yeah. So I think I’m getting a little tangential here, but I thinkit’s really hard to all of a sudden tap into those emotions and those memoriesof loss and war, and then not be really sure where the story goes and where I’mgoing to go and what you’re going to end up with, as opposed to having more ofa script. And I think part of it for me also was … Okay, so to be honest, I wasvery begrudging about switching to a personal story, but I’m very, very glad wedid.

Wazhmah Osman (20:20):

And one of the concerns I also had, aside from just releasing some ofmy scholarly training and control over the story, was that I wanted to makesure that this story wasn’t going to just be representative of my family’sstory, but also that other Afghans could relate to it as well. 50% of thepopulation has become refugees, and if you include internal displacements, it’sthree-quarters of the country. So this is something that affected everyone.

Wazhmah Osman (20:59):

And so I was, what’s the word? Satisfied that I had communicatedsomething that represented other people in Afghanistan as well during ascreening that we had in Kabul in 2008. We were invited by this Germanfestival, it was sponsored by the Castle Film Festival, it was called SpliceIn, I’m forgetting the exact name, it was called Splice In Gender inAfghanistan, something like that. So they invited us to screen the film in 2008at [inaudible 00:21:48], which is an old French institution and school, andover 1000 people showed up, all Afghan for the most part.

Wazhmah Osman (21:59):

And during the film and after the film when the lights went up, peoplewere in tears, and my father was there too, had really great questions, andthey were moved by the film. And so that, for me, made it worthwhile. Because Iwanted to make sure that the film communicated something about war to peoplethat hadn’t experienced war just to show the extremeness of how it and how muchit destroys a family and a country, but it was also really important for methat it be a space for healing for insiders as well, people who’ve beentraumatized by it.

Wazhmah Osman (22:44):

It screened around the world, mostly in the US, but I think that, forme, was a really important screening and kind of made me feel like it wasimportant that we made that film the way that we did.

Cathy Hannabach (22:59):

The film was such a moving piece, but it’s also such a fantasticexample of how combining art, in this case filmmaking, with political activismand your academic training, can do something really important in the world.That can contribute to a kind of worldmaking or kind of social justiceimagining otherwise.

Cathy Hannabach (23:28):

I’m curious how you see your work maybe beyond the film, including thefilm, including your other projects, how you see your work combining thosethree realms, art, activism, and academia.

Wazhmah Osman (23:51):

Well first of all, thank you for saying all those kind things aboutthis film, but I think for me, activism happens almost naturally in that ifyou’ve experienced certain things, you can’t help not to have a social justicebend to your work, meaning that just very simply put, if you’ve experienced theinjustices of war, there’s no way that you can be pro-war or a supporter of waror not call out when you see warlordism or these war hawks today drumming upthe beats of anger and rage and racism so that they can muster more war.

Wazhmah Osman (24:51):

And so it sort of happens naturally in that sense. But I think thefilm also beyond war is interesting because most films that are done inAfghanistan, especially documentaries, are done by men. And so in this case,you have two women that both have access to the wider street culture ofAfghanistan, but we also have more access to the private spheres ofAfghanistan, because Afghanistan is, what in academia we call … they havehomosocial worlds. And so we were able to get these personal interviews that Ithink other people couldn’t get access to.

Wazhmah Osman (25:44):

And also being two women on the street interviewing, we interviewed everyonefrom shopkeepers to ministers to taxi drivers, and people were really surprisedthat we would have that kind of access, but I think our gender and sexualityand many things came into play there as well, and I think it was important forus in that respect, when we decided to go the personal documentary route, tokeep both of us in it and to be as real about it as possible. Because at onepoint, we had some distributors interested and they wanted us to have maybe acelebrity do the narration or things like that, and we decided against that.

Cathy Hannabach (26:34):

That would’ve been a really different movie.

Wazhmah Osman (26:38):

Yeah. It would’ve been.

Cathy Hannabach (26:39):

For sure, yeah.

Wazhmah Osman (26:40):

And I think in terms of the artistic aspects of the film, a lot of thecredit goes to our co-producer and editor of the film, Stephen Jablonsky, andKelly as well, who both were able to use all these computer special effects andall these various softwares to kind of bring the old brochure back to life.They animated all types of things. And they also animated kids’ drawings, wewent to visit some orphanages and kids’ schools and things like that, andStephen and Kelly designed it in such a way so that they animated variousthings. And so that created a much more rich layered narrative element to itthat I think audiences can really feel the story more. So I think that’s howthat happened.

Cathy Hannabach (27:41):

Nice. This might seem like shifting gears, but it relates, I swear.When the DNC, the Democratic National Convention, came to Philadelphia thispast summer, you were part of this really amazing panel called The Next FourYears: (Neo)colonialism, US Foreign Policy, and Strategies of Resistance, andthe connection I’m thinking of is this, in many ways that panel, it broughttogether professors, filmmakers, scholars, journalists, activists, people fromacross professions, across communities to get at some of those questions thatyou were just talking about, the kind of effect of war by people who haveactually experienced it, who have been the target of it, who have differentinvestments in it, different roles to play in it, particularly colonial wars orneocolonial wars in our contemporary age.

Cathy Hannabach (28:36):

And I’d love to hear more about how that panel worked. What youthought of it, how your role as a filmmaker and a filmmaker who has producedfilms about war, how that fits into this kind of broad-based coalitionalcritique of US imperialism.

Wazhmah Osman (28:58):

Yeah. The panel that was DNC-related in Philly last month, that wassponsored by JVP, Jewish Voices for Peace was also one of those reallyincredible experiences and opportunities that I’ve had, and I think for thatpanel, I was able to tap into both being a filmmaker and being an academic, aswell as an activist, and bring it all together. And I think one of the things Irealized was that I’ve been going back and forth to the region, Afghanistan andall the surrounding countries for a long time under all those capacities, butthat in many ways, that the research that I was doing for my scholarship alsocan be applied to and used for activism.

Wazhmah Osman (30:13):

So most of my methods are ethnographic, which means that I work withpeople and I interview people, and so that’s very relevant in terms of if youwant to get the beat or the pulse of a nation or a country, you’ve got toreally sense a good sense of that, because if you have good interview skillsand you’re building these relationships with people and they trust you, thenthey share from the hart. They really tell you what’s going on.

Wazhmah Osman (30:48):

And one of the things that I’ve encountered there over and over againis the continued impact of war and warfare, whereas I experienced one of thefirst wars as a child, nowadays, especially during my last research trip there,I noticed that people have been very much impacted by drone warfare, and that’sthe latest technologies. And the irony is Afghanistan, according to UNstatistics, has one of the highest amounts of landmines, and there’s manydifferent organizations that are trying to clean up those landmines, but it’llprobably take decades before that’s done because it’s a very long and tediousprocess.

Wazhmah Osman (31:37):

And now, one of the newest technologies of war, drones are also beingutilized in Afghanistan more than many other places, especially on the borderregions between Afghanistan and Pakistan. So it has one of the world’s oldestand newest war technologies, and so I can’t help but … even though myresearch was not about war and the topic of my manuscript was aboutinternational funding of the media in Afghanistan, there’s no way that youcan’t not talk about the everyday impact of international military forces andweapons of war on the daily lives of people.

Wazhmah Osman (32:29):

And so when I was asked to be a part of this panel, I was able tobring those stories and talk about that, and also combine it with my mediascholarship and training, which is that in many ways as a country, we arecensoring the true experience of war. And more and more, we’ve become a media… Let me clarify. The mainstream media represents this shock and awe,dazzling virtual reality of war that is not really what people experience. AndI think partially that has to do with what the US Government and media learnedwith both the Vietnam War and the civil rights is that when you show a newsreelof what’s actually going on, it usually changes the tide of public opinionagainst war in many ways.

Wazhmah Osman (33:41):

And so since then, for example, this is just one of many ways that theUS mainstream media censors war footage, is that since Vietnam, manypresidents, including President Obama, do not show the coffins of deceasedsoldiers that return from Afghanistan, or before that, when they returned fromIraq. And also, journalists are discouraged from going to the front lines, soyou have more and more pre-packaged stories and embedded journalists so thatthe military can control what they see and what they don’t see.

Wazhmah Osman (34:34):

And so this is a very dangerous move in a society that is supposedlyDemocratic and supposedly has an independent media, like the US like we’resupposed to. And that seems to be the trend more and more is not seeing what’sreally going on, so that’s one of the things I talked about also, is howimportant that is that we show that. And so in that respect, I was able tobring in various aspects of my training, both as an academic and as a filmmakerand as an ethnographer into analyzing the situation.

Wazhmah Osman (35:23):

And I just wanted to say one more thing. It’s very similar to what’shappening, I think, with the Black Lives Matter movement now, you can make acorrelation between the civil rights movement is that when you do have actualfootage of these things, people are stirred. People sort of wake up from theirconsumerist stupor and want to do something. Because I honestly do believe thatthe vast majority of human beings are good. They’re just innately good, andthey don’t want to see injustice, whether it’s towards people in our owncountry here in the US or in other parts of the world.

Wazhmah Osman (36:06):

And so people are empathetic, they care. They’re sympathetic. They’recompassionate, and they don’t want to see people being bombed to bits by bombsthat are coming from our country. Or in this country, having the police shootat and kill innocent people without any proof preemptively. Yeah. So I’ll leaveit here.

Wazhmah Osman (36:34):

I’ll just say one more thing, I think the DNC panel was a veryenergizing experience for me because not only were the panelists representing across-section of journalists and activists and academics and everybody else inbetween, but the audience itself was just so energized, and I think it remindsme that cities like Philly and New York have such incredible people and havebuilt such positive social movements.

Wazhmah Osman (37:12):

It was a packed audience at the Philadelphia Ethical Society and youhad a section with signs that said, “Homos against empire,” and youhad all the queer contingent there, and then you had another section ofleft-leaning people sponsored by Jewish Voices for Peace, and then you had moreliberal people and centrist people, but somehow everybody was coming togetherto really think about, debate what’s going on with US foreign policy and how wedon’t want certain things to continue happening in our name, because we don’tlive in an isolated world, we are all interconnected, we can feel one another’spain, and likewise, violence crosses borders.

Wazhmah Osman (38:18):

The reason why we have the war on terror as we do in many respects isbecause of foreign policy mistakes we’ve made. Mistakes I think is the generousterm to use for it, but I’ll leave it at that.

Cathy Hannabach (38:34):

Definitely. So this brings me to my favorite question that I get toask guests, which is really at the heart of what this podcast is all about. Sothe name of this podcast is Imagine Otherwise, and all of the guests, includingyourself, that come on here are just absolutely astounding, fantastic examplesof what it means to actually do that.

Cathy Hannabach (38:58):

So I’ll ask you, what’s that world that you’re working towards whenyou make your films, when you step in front of a classroom, when you write yourscholarship, when you help organize activist events, what’s the world thatyou’re working towards? What’s the world that you want?

Wazhmah Osman (39:16):

Yeah. That’s such a great question, and I love the name of yourpodcast too, Imagine Otherwise, because I feel like deep inside all of ourhearts, there’s a reason why we do what we do, and often what we do is not themost popular trendy things to do, and most of us when we do it, sometimes we’reputting ourselves in jeopardy but we’re motivated by something.

Wazhmah Osman (39:41):

And so I think the easiest way maybe to answer that is what I said inthe JVP DNC related talk, which is for me, 1989 with the collapse of the SovietUnion was a really pivotal year, and I think for a lot of people that rememberit, that was a really important year because first the Soviet Union withdrewfrom Afghanistan, and I remember as a kid after 10 years of occupation, I waselated. And I also remember some kids in school were rude and they said,“Now that Afghanistan’s finally free, go back,” but that’s a wholeother thing.

Wazhmah Osman (40:38):

But I remember there was a sigh of relief that you can almost feel andhear around the world, where a superpower had collapsed. The Soviet Union hadimploded, the Berlin Wall had fallen, and people were finally imagining peacelike, “We’re going to have a world where there’s going to be no more ColdWar, there’s going to be no more eminent threat of nuclear warfare, there’sgoing to be not living in constant fear of going into bomb shelters,” orthings that human beings have had to live with for a long time.

Wazhmah Osman (41:32):

But that didn’t happen. And if you think about where we’re at rightnow, both in Philly and in New York, everybody since 9/11 feels under constantthreat of another terrorist attack, and if you see a suspicious package, thesigns are everywhere. Before that, there was orange alerts and red alerts andall of that, and so I think the world I would like to imagine is that peace isstill possible, and peace can still happen.

Wazhmah Osman (42:15):

And sometimes it seems like a very distant dream, but that’s the worldI’d like to imagine. And I think a key aspect of that, which goes back to allthe other great questions you’ve asked me, is that I think we need to feel itfirst before we could be analytical and critical and objective and all thosethings, I think we need to be able to feel for and empathize with ourneighbors, whether in our own communities or more internationally and globally,we need to build alliances and networks.

Wazhmah Osman (42:58):

And so if we start from this position of feeling it first, then it’sgoing to be hard to … I’m trying to figure out how to best say it. It’s hardto be able to feel the hatred necessary or the prejudice that’s necessary orthe racism to be okay with being violent towards groups of people, beingviolent towards, whether it’s Black youth in this country, or Arabs andPersians and Muslims and South Asians in other parts of the world, essentiallythe global South and the global East, it’s going to be much harder to be okaywhen our country goes to war someplace else or decides to have regime change ofa Democratically-elected leader, be it in South America, in Latin America, orin North Africa or wherever.

Wazhmah Osman (44:16):

That’s the world I would like to see. I would like to see a worldwhere we, the people who don’t have capital and power and all these powerful institutionson our side, realize what we do have on our side is each other, and that we’regoing to build these alliances across races and genders and sexualities andnationalities and everything and fight for one another. Fight for one another’shuman rights because we’re all the same and want that for one another. We’reall compassionate in that respect.

Wazhmah Osman (45:08):

No, we’re not all the same and we all have different things, but wecan still bridge the gap. And then I think imagining a world where peace isreally possible so that we don’t have to spend so much of our budget going to… a huge percent of the US budget goes to the military, the Department ofDefense, and that can be spent so much better for education and the arts andculture and other types of social services, and I think that would be a beautifulworld if that happens across the globe.

Cathy Hannabach (46:02):

Thanks for listening to another episode of Imagine Otherwise. Be sureto check out our website at ImagineOtherwise.com to listen to full episodes,read show notes, and see links to the people, books, and projects discussed onthe show. You can also subscribe to us on iTunes.

Wazhmah Osman on Autoethnography and Afghan Documentary Film - Ideas on Fire (2025)