Screening 3 | Aftermaths of Displacement
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La lumière collective, 7080 Rue Alexandra #506, Montréal, QC H2S 3J5
The three short films featured in this program revisit, each in a different location, aftermaths of displacement rendered in/visible in the histories of built environment, urban spaces, and landscapes to invoke and animate lost and untold voices, stories, and events.
Galb’Echaouf (2021), Abdessamad El Montassir, 18’
While investigating events that profoundly altered the landscape of the Western Sahara, El Montassir found himself faced with a silent environment, haunted by its complex socio-political history. As an alternative to human witnesses, he decided to focus on the organic life that inhabits the desert to reconstruct what people have forgotten.
Tellurian Drama (2020), Riar Rizaldi, 26’
May 5th, 1923. The Dutch East Indies government celebrated the opening of a new radio station in West Java. It was called Radio Malabar. In March 2020, the local Indonesian government plans to reactivate the station as a historical site and tourist attraction. Tellurian Drama imagines what would have happened in between: the vital role of mountain in history; colonial ruins as an apparatus for geoengineering technology; and the invisible power of indigenous ancestral. Narrated based on the forgotten text written by a prominent pseudo-anthropologist Drs. Munarwan, Tellurian Drama problematizes the notion of decolonisation, geocentric technology, and historicity of communication.
The Secret Garden (2023), Nour Ouayda, 27′
The inhabitants of a city awake one morning to find that never-before-seen trees, plants, and flowers suddenly erupted throughout the streets and in the squares. Strange and mysterious events start taking place as Camelia and Nahla investigate the origins of these new and peculiar creatures.
The screening will be followed by a discussion with filmmaker and archivist Chant Partamian and film scholar and programmer Sima Kokotović, moderated by Sanaz Sohrabi and Farah Atoui.
RSVP for the screening here.
While this event is free, we suggest donating the equivalent of a ticket price (or more if you can) at the door. All the money raised will be sent to the Ghassan Abu Sittah Children’s Fund. Otherwise please consider donating directly to this or other medical aid organizations (including Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, Medical Aid for Palestinians, Palestinian Medical Aid Relief Society) whether you are attending or not.
Aftermaths of Displacement is part of the The Political Aesthetic: Resisting Displacement, Displacing Resistance screening series (October 2023-April 2024), curated by Sanaz Sohrabi and Farah Atoui.
ABOUT THE AXIS
The Political Aesthetic: Resisting Displacement, Displacing Resistance
The Political Aesthetic screening series explores how political action is performed by taking up space and place through artistic actions. Aesthetic and imaginative practices bring an entangled web of forgotten histories, memories, and geographies in relation to one another, mediated through new forms of encounter and arrangement. We focus on art’s capacity to reveal things-in-relation through formal experimentation, performative actions, and public interventions. We are focused both on the violence of the force of displacement, and the potency of displacement as a strategy of dissent, creating temporary and shifting spaces of inhabitation and intimacy, moving things out of the way to make room for new (and potentially liberatory) forces.
Find more info on this screening series here.
