Thursday, July 23, 2026 at 12:00 AM to Thursday, August 6, 2026 at 11:59 PM
Human Resources, Los Angeles
This is the first of 3 consecutive Thursday nights of films by Los Angeles artist Stanya Kahn. [Sliding scale tickets](https://pools.events/t/qprsxzzu/) **Thursday July 23rd at 8pm - *Stand in the Stream* (2011-2017)** Stand in the Stream defies categorization—an ambient digital feature about life, death, the inextricability of the personal from the political, the primacy of the image and the interplay of scale in human struggle, from the intimacy of the home to the global streets, the handheld camera to the drone. Shot over the course of six years, Stand in the Stream captures historic shifts in popular uprisings and the nascent use of the internet to organize and document. Made during a period in which massive and unprecedented protest movements rose across the globe between 2010 and 2017—Tunisia, Egypt, Brazil, Turkey, the U.S.—the film is also follows the intimate arc of deterioration and death of the artist’s activist/worker mother, alongside personal documentation of daily life amidst swiftly changing political and digital landscapes. Live-streams screen-recorded in real-time are intercut with footage Kahn shot on multiple camera formats, as an embodied means to reframe our screen-saturated, contemporary perspectives without using found footage. With a dense and visceral sound score, Stand in the Stream moves from the home to the wild, from online chat rooms to the streets. From the birth of a child to the death of a mother, from Tahrir Square to Standing Rock and Trump's (first) inauguration, Stand in the Stream is an urgent contemporary ode and a story for the people. **Thursday July 30th at 8pm - *Dont Go Back to Sleep*** Color HD video with stereo sound Written, directed, shot, edited and sound designed by Stanya Kahn ©2014 Includes original sounds/music by Kahn and Keith Wood (Hush Arbors, Chelsea Light Moving). B Camera by Ignacio Genzon, Mike Soltz and Chiara Giovando. The cast contributed primary dialogue. Made with the support of Grand Arts, Kansas City Courtesy of the artist *“People are going back and forth* *across the doorsill where the two worlds touch.* *The door is round and open* *Don’t go back to sleep!” * *–Rumi* *“When you affect something, you are at the same time opening yourself up to being affected in turn, and in a slightly different way than you might have been the moment before. You have made a transition, however slight. You have stepped over a threshold.”* *—Brian Massumi, (translator, "A Thousand Plateaus"), from interview: Navigating Movements* *Don’t Go Back To Sleep* is an experimental narrative feature film that operates as a metaphor for the violence of the state and resulting citizen trauma and resilience. As medical professionals perform haphazard triage, mostly on each other, in homes left vacant during the 2008 housing crash, we realize they may be the only people left: workers (The People) vs the danger outside: the state (police/military/clampdown). In tenuous relations between strangers collaborating under pressure, darkly comedic camaraderie arises in small human exchanges. Thursday August 6th at 8pm - [Become a member](https://pools.events/o/human_resources_la/join/) for $13/month to access all of HR events including this summer's Cinema Land featuring Stanya Kahn's film survey! Add to calendar Google Calendar iCalendar Outlook 365 Outlook Live