Naeem Mohaiemen Revisits Zahir Raihan’s Disappearance at Kochi Biennale

KOCHI:
At the latest edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB), artist-filmmaker Naeem Mohaiemen has turned absence into the central character of his new moving-image work, A Missing Can of Film (2025).

The project revisits the unresolved disappearance of Bangladeshi filmmaker and novelist Zahir Raihan and the rumoured existence of a lost 16mm film canister believed to hold politically sensitive footage.

Presented as an experimental documentary installation, Mohaiemen’s work blends contemporary footage shot inside the largely deserted Bangladesh Film Development Corporation with fragments, speculation and archival references surrounding Raihan’s final days.

Raihan, an influential cultural figure during the liberation struggle, disappeared shortly after the end of the 1971 war and was later officially listed as a martyr, though the circumstances of his disappearance remain unresolved.

Rather than attempting a straightforward reconstruction of history, Mohaiemen deliberately embraces the gaps. The film is structured around what cannot be found, turning the missing reel into a metaphor for the fragility of political memory.

“Historian Afsan Chowdhury was the first person to tell me the fable of Raihan’s unfinished film, as a possible tell-tale clue as to his disappearance,” Mohaiemen said when discussing the project at the Biennale. “Over the years I was alternately motivated and defeated by the idea of tracing that missing canister. At a certain point in the process, you encounter the limits of ‘maybe one day.’”

The work situates Raihan’s legacy within the shifting political landscape of South Asia, where archives are often incomplete and cultural memory is shaped by both state narratives and personal testimony. Mohaiemen’s practice, spanning film, photography and essays, frequently revisits such fragmented histories of the global Left and postcolonial movements.

At the Biennale installation, the near-empty film studios of Dhaka serve as a powerful visual device. Their silence mirrors the unresolved questions surrounding Raihan’s disappearance and the uncertain trajectory of political change in Bangladesh.

Viewers may interpret the film as drawing parallels between the ideological aspirations that followed Bangladesh’s independence in 1971 and the turbulence after the country’s 2024 student uprising. Mohaiemen, however, resists framing the work as a direct historical analogy.

“I did not make this analogy,” he clarifies. “Rather, I suggested that the power vacuum following the 2024 student uprising meant that, ironically but also perhaps appropriately, the Bangladesh Film Development Corporation was largely deserted when we filmed this project.”

The deserted studios become a haunting backdrop, reflecting how institutions tied to cinema and political storytelling can fall silent during moments of upheaval. By placing Raihan’s unresolved story within these empty spaces, Mohaiemen asks audiences to consider how dissenting histories survive when archives disappear.

In Mohaiemen’s telling, the missing can of film is less a lost artefact than a symbol of the many stories that remain unrecorded, buried in fragile archives or fading recollections. In a region where political upheaval often disrupts cultural memory, the void itself becomes the most revealing evidence.