Best known for her non-linear multimedia work, filmmaker Mara Ahmed creates documentaries, soundscapes and visual art projects that challenge colonial narratives and cross political and cultural borders. Born in Lahore but educated in Belgium, Pakistan and the United States, Ahmed’s work reflects those layered histories and displacements. She has directed five films, including “The Muslims I Know,” “Pakistan One on One,” “A Thin Wall,” and “Return to Sender,” which was funded through a NYSCA grant. Her films have aired on PBS as well as screening internationally.
Ahmed’s latest doc, “The Injured Body: A Film About Racism in America” was shot and post-produced in Rochester, weaving together the voices of 16 women rooted in local communities and featuring the work of 10 dance artists and choreographers. When the film premiered at the Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington last November, she expected a thoughtful audience. What she did not expect was the depth of the discussion that followed.
Ahmed was joined by visual artist Brianna L. Hernández and Uzma Aslam Khan, a Pakistani novelist and researcher.
“The post-discussion was one of the best I’ve ever done,” she said. “The questions and conversation were incredible.”
Ahmed knew the discussion prompts ahead of time, but what moved her was how closely Hernández and Khan had engaged with the work.
“They took copious notes. They really dove into the film,” Ahmed said. “I was asked questions about little scenes. Questions about the dances. It was really a back-and-forth.”
That intimacy mirrors the film itself. Shot across changing seasons, “The Injured Body” traces the cumulative effects of racial microaggressions through testimony, choreography, landscape and silence. The film moves through Rochester’s beaches, winters, lilacs and parks with a tactile, seasonal rhythm.
“It feels like a tribute to Rochester,” Ahmed said. “I wanted the film to be very sensorial.”
Featuring mesmerizing dance sequences primarily choreographed by Mariko Yamada, the documentary blends movement, music, costume and visual texture into a layered sensory experience. From vibrant costumes to a dynamic musical score, every element of the film works to immerse viewers not only intellectually, but physically and emotionally.
Yamada said she was initially drawn to the project as a space for learning and inquiry.
“I was introduced to Mara by a colleague,” she said. “I came in to the process with an intention to learn through the collaboration about racism in the U.S. As an immigrant of color with an accent, I have had experiences of racism that affected my body and mind.”
Working on the film shifted something fundamental in how Yamada understood those experiences.
“Working with Mara made me realize they were indeed real,” she said. “I was able to articulate what I was experiencing with language. I understood what I experienced. Dots were connected. Things made sense.”
The film centers on racial microaggressions, interactions so normalized and ambiguous that they are often dismissed in the moment, even as they accumulate into lasting psychological and physical harm.
“Because the film is focused on racial microaggressions, there was always the possibility that we would go back and forth between open racism and more subtle interactions,” Ahmed said. “Because they are unmarked, not legally legible, I knew there was going to be some back and forth.”
But she rejects the idea that the “micro” makes the violence insignificant.
“I know that the micro can become the macro,” she said. “One participant in the film is talking about microaggressions in the medical field, where she was not believed about her pain, and medical care was not done. There is a relationship between the micro and the macro. They enable each other.”
Ahmed said many women of color immediately recognized the experiences described in the film, while some viewers struggled to even define the term.
“I had a group of white friends, and we were having this conversation,” she said. “They wanted an example of a microaggression. They were saying, ‘Maybe that’s just how the person said it. Maybe they did not mean anything by it.’”
The documentary expands beyond spoken testimony through dance sequences. Ahmed said movement became essential once she realized language alone could not contain what the film was exploring.
“Mariko and I had blended live dance, film, and text in a Fringe Festival piece in 2017,” she said. “I realized that dance was a foreign language. It truly intrigued me. It meshed organically with film.”
Because the documentary is fundamentally about the body, choreography became more than illustration.
“Dance is an art form where the body is the medium,” Ahmed said. “I wanted the film to be more than injury. I wanted it to be about healing and hope, somatic therapy. The body becomes a way to regulate the nervous system. There is a lot of wisdom in the body.”
Many of the dance sequences were filmed outdoors, with choreography primarily led by Yamada.
“We have become disconnected from nature and our own bodies,” Ahmed said. “I wanted to return the body to nature. I wanted to go back to that primal connection.”
The result is a film that alternates between testimony and breath, tension and release.
“It gives the audience breathing space between the conversations,” Ahmed said. “It allows the audience to absorb and work through their feelings.”
Questions of representation and authority also shaped the filmmaking process. Ahmed repeatedly returned to ideas she explored in her earlier film, Return to Sender, about the colonial gaze and the power to construct narratives about marginalized people.
“As a filmmaker I have power, even in small decisions,” she said. “What type of music I select. The angles that I shoot.”
To counter that imbalance, Ahmed treated the documentary as a collaborative process.
“I shared the rough cut with all of the women I interviewed,” she said. “I wanted to make sure they were onboard with the story and how they were presented.”
That openness came with tension.
“An artist wants the authority to shape the work,” Ahmed said. “But with this project, I opened myself up to feedback. I wanted to do the right thing.”
The length of the filmmaking process — eight years — surprised even some of Ahmed’s collaborators.
“COVID happened. We moved to Long Island. I was working on other projects,” she said. “I had made another film. I was creating websites, archives, installations. A lot happened over those eight years. I was working on it little by little. Rajesh Barnabas, the cinematographer, was a little surprised it got made.”
The film’s title comes from Claudia Rankine, whose book “Citizen: An American Lyric” helped Ahmed think about how poetry can make invisible injuries legible.
“The phrase ‘injured body’ is not abstract to me,” she said. “Poetry is intense, sharp, intact with ideas.”
Reading Rankine’s work became a turning point.
“When I read the book, I was blown away,” she said. “I thought, how can I use film to do the same thing? How can I make these aggressions more legible, so people can mark those aggressions, so people can avoid microaggressions?”
Ultimately, Ahmed sees the film not only as a document of injury, but as a call to imagine a world beyond racism and to believe in the possibility of collective healing. For Ahmed, those conversations are inseparable from the film itself.
“I didn’t just want to talk about the injury,” she said. “I wanted to talk about the body as a site of resistance and force. And healing. We can collectively heal.”
“The Injured Body: A Film About Racism in America” will have its premiere and post-screening discussion at 11:30 a.m. on Saturday, May 30 at Little Theatre 1, 240 East Ave. Tickets and more info here.
George Cassidy Payne is a writer and journalist exploring the intersections of art, culture and social justice in Western New York. He also works as a crisis counselor and community organizer, bringing a deep commitment to storytelling and human connection.
