Master Class with Mo Ogrodnik on Creative Research and her debut novel GULF
The FUSION FILM FESTIVAL in collaboration with Tisch Creative Research invites you to join us on April 29 at 5:30pm for a master class conversation about the impact of research and research funding on the creative process through the lens of Mo Ogrodnik’s debut novel, GULF (in release May 5 from Simon & Schuster.)
Told through a prism of female voices, this cinematic debut follows five women with vastly different origins—from the Philippines to Ethiopia to New York City—whose lives bring them to the Arabian Gulf, where they collide with devastating and profound consequences.
The conversation, moderated by Gail Segal will offer a deep dive into how research across disciplines, media and cultures anchored Ogrodnik’s creative process.
With critical assistance provided by two Dean’s Faculty Travel Grants, Ogrodnik traveled to the Philippines and Ethiopia, where she documented her findings through photographs and oral interviews that would inform scenes, character psychology, and specifics of place. Drawing a variety of resources from funders, independent service organizations and local institutions, Ogrodnik’s experience offers a roadmap for artists of any discipline seeking immersive experiences to inform their work, illuminating the importance of inquiry, curiosity and proximity in the development of contemporary narrative.
Written with unsettling intimacy and determined empathy, Gulf exposes the stark realities of what happens when a woman’s agency is stripped away and asks how far we will go in order to survive.
Dounia, a young Saudi mother, finds herself alienated in a desolate, post-weather, air-conditioned modernist box and decides to rebel against all forms of domesticity. Flora, a Filipina domestic worker haunted by the flood that claimed her infant’s life, navigates the perils of her boss’s insurrection. Zeinah, a Syrian woman, seeks love within the confines of her arranged marriage to a jihadist and finds herself joining the female morality police. Justine, a white American curator, reckons with her own violence and ethical limitations when her life intersects with Eskedare, a spirited and defiant Ethiopian teenager whose dreams have dead-ended in the Gulf. Bold moves unlock vital consequences, each woman’s journey confronting us with our own capacity for cruelty, rebellion, resilience—and hope.
Mo Ogrodnik is an Associate Professor in the Undergraduate Film & Television Department at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. She previously served as the Associate Dean of the Arts at NYU Abu Dhabi and is the Principal Investigator of FIND, an artistic research lab that explores global issues facing the MENASA region (Middle East, North Africa, South Asia) through the lens of artists, scholars, and technologists.
Gail Segal is an Associate Arts Professor in the Graduate Film Department at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and serves as the Tisch Liaison to the NYU Global Network. She wrote and directed the award-winning narrative short film, Filigrane, set in the Empty Quarter of the U.A.E., as well as a documentary portrait of women textile workers in Turkey, entitled Meanwhile, in Turkey.