Stream/Society--Angels Are Made of Light (2018) | James Longley

Wednesday, April 22, 2020 - 5:00pm to Friday, April 24, 2020 - 11:45pm
A scene from “Angels Are Made of Light,” directed by James Longley. Credit...Grasshopper Film

NOTICE: Screen/Society's public screenings may be on hiatus for the time being (stay up to date with Duke University's Coronavirus Response here) but we have been busy exploring ways to bring Screen/Society programming into your home streaming environment, in our new incarnation as "Stream/Society".
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We're excited to announce that we've partnered once again with our friends at Grasshopper Film to bring you a special time-limited opportunity to stream James Longley's film, Angels Are Made of Light, starting Wednesday afternoon (April 22nd) and ending at 11:59pm on Friday night (April 24th)


Angels Are Made of Light
(James Longley, 2018, 117 min, USA, Color, Streaming)

A stirring and beautiful documentary from Academy Award-nominated director James Longley (Iraq in Fragments), Angels Are Made of Light traces the lives of young students and their teachers at a school in the old city of Kabul. Interweaving the modern history of Afghanistan with present-day portraits, the film offers an intimate and nuanced vision of a society living in the shadow of war.

"A remarkable film. What is life like on the ground for ordinary people in another culture, another world? That’s been the bread and butter of observational documentaries for forever, but almost never is it done with the kind of beauty and grace filmmaker James Longley brings to Angels are Made of Light." -- Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times

"Long shots of Kabul reveal the ragged majesty of the city; footage of streets, shops and doorways absorbs us in the hustle and bustle of neighborhood life; attentive close-ups convey people’s complicated thoughts. The director finds beauty everywhere — in a cloud of dust, a traffic jam, the raucous din of children at play. And wherever such beauty exists, we imagine, hope can never be entirely absent." -- Bilge Ebiri, New York Times (Critic's Pick)

Sponsored by the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image (AMI).


Screen/Society screenings are free and open to the public.

Streaming (online)