Paris Center Stories: Yasmine Benabdallah (CC '16)

Columbia College alumna Yasmine Benabdallah has found a home away from home in the Paris Center.

March 06, 2018

I studied Film and Mathematics at Columbia and was part of Columbia College's 2016 class. The summer before my senior year, I was the recipient of a Columbia University Scholars Program independent research fund, that allowed me to do research and shoot a documentary in Chile. That was my first contact with the Global Centers.

The Global Center in Santiago was of great help, and that's really when I started understanding that the Columbia community reached way farther than New York. It was a soothing thought to me, being an international student born and raised in Morocco, who viewed her life as a journey through the world.

Upon graduating, I moved to Paris to attend the Experimental Programme in Political Arts (SPEAP), a master's program at Sciences Po Paris. As I was trying to build a new community for myself, I looked into what felt closest: Columbia. Trying to recreate the feeling of home and belonging that I felt during my four years on campus, I decided to go to the Paris Global Center. The first event I attended was one around the misrepresentation of the banlieues. Something felt just right. The conversation, the speakers, the audience, the staff, the space. All felt like something I already knew.

The program I was attending was under the direction of Bruno Latour, and was at the intersection of arts, sciences, political and social sciences. With a group of classmates, we were working on a commissioned exhibition around borders in contemporary conflicts. That led me to my second visit of Reid Hall. It was for an event around film and borders, and yet again the community that the event brought together struck me as just right. That's when I met Loren Wolfe. She has been the key for my experience of Columbia in Paris. A few months later, she invited me to moderate a panel on arts and social sciences in the face of populism within a larger conference. That's when I understood how powerful it is to be part of this community, and in particular because of the in-between-ness of this space. Between Columbia and Paris. Two spaces that I know but that I love to know differently as well.

After finishing my masters program, I have been developing my own film work. I am currently working on "Allah Made Me Queer," a short documentary film exploring the intersection of Islam and queerness, and "Ojalà: la vuelta al origen," a feature documentary film on the dance and music of the Palestinian diaspora of Santiago, Chile.

I am also one of the four artists that make up MYST, a multidisciplinary collective created out of SPEAP, currently focussing on an exhibition on borders in contemporary conflicts.

Columbia Global Centers l Paris has come to be a perfect complement to my experience here, as a space for conversation, challenge, and opportunity.

To find out more about Yasmine's work, visit her website.