Lahib Jaddo, haunted by the echoes of her native Iraq in the landscape of the Texas Panhandle, makes art that mixes observation and remembrance. Her daily life in the college town of Lubbock, where she has taught for decades, is recorded in this affectionate documentary by her daughter, Nadia Shihab, whose ticklish camera teases out her mother’s eccentricities, the quirks of the people around her, and the passage of time. As Shihab watches, a picture emerges of what an uncareful observer might call assimilation: an outward adjustment obscuring depths of diasporic longing, the doubling and tripling of identities always grounded by that shifting but insistent anchor, the question of home.
Nadia Shihab is an artist and filmmaker whose work draws on her interest in diasporic longing, relationships to place, and processes of improvisation. Her films have screened in film festivals and galleries internationally. Jaddoland is Shihab's first feature film and has received several awards, including Best Documentary Feature (Austin AAFF) and three Special Jury Awards (New Orleans FF, LA AAPFF).This film is not rated (2018, 90 min.).
"Jaddoland is a breath of fresh air: a film not tied down by convention or structure, it playfully and thoughtfully plumbs issues of identity, art, and belonging."
—Clint Bowie, Artistic Director, New Orleans Film Festival
This film is part of Late Nights at the Dallas Museum of Art.