Screening Rights Film Festival (SRFF) is the West Midlands’ festival of socially engaged and formally innovative cinema from the Global South.

It was founded in 2015 by Professor Michele Aaron, then a Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Birmingham, now a Professor in Film & TV Studies at the University of Warwick. Initially hosted at various venues in Birmingham, SRFF expanded to include Coventry in 2018, and an online edition took place in 2020. Situated at the intersection of art, academia, and activism, the festival is primarily funded by the Warwick Institute of Engagement, with occasional support from Film Hub Midlands.

SRFF is known for showcasing a diverse range of films that explore human rights and social justice issues, from historical atrocities to contemporary stories of activism, engaging with some of the most urgent issues of the past, present, and future. The festival aims to foster connections within and between the local communities and initiatives of the West Midlands, create space for critical thinking, and offer tools for direct action. The focus is not only on the films but also on the post-screening Q&A sessions and audience participation. All screenings at the festival include special events with panel discussions featuring experts on the topics raised by the films.

ARCHIVE

SRFF 2024: DOUBLE BILL

Screening Rights, a festival of socially engaged and formally innovative cinema from the Global South, returns with a new, highly ambitious and conceptual 10th-anniversary edition, which will take place from 17-20 October in Birmingham and Coventry.

Solidarity Through Mutual (Un)learning

In line with this year’s subtitle and theme, DOUBLE BILL, we will be screening films from seemingly different and sometimes geographically distant contexts that, in fact, share much in common—such as struggles, traumas, and cultural similarities. Each screening will pair a feature with a short film or present a series of mid-length moving image works that are intended to complement, echo, and enhance one another. We are particularly interested in promoting South-to-South solidarity through mutual (un)learning between countries and populations in East and West Asia, East Africa, and Latin America on the one hand, and those in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the South Caucasus on the other. The motif of duality and doubling is highlighted through our visuals, namely golden lines dissecting film stills in two.

What’s On

The festival comprises 14 films in total, with two screenings in Coventry, at the Warwick Arts Centre and the Coventry Transport Museum, and four in Birmingham, once again taking place at the Midlands Arts Centre, a local favourite. Most of the films are cutting-edge festival titles from Palestine, Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia, Brazil, Ethiopia, Iran, and more, released in the last two years and never before screened in Birmingham or Coventry. A new addition to the festival is the online screening of two shorts, staged in collaboration with the Birmingham-based arts initiative Grand Union, which will take place on the Grand Union website immediately before and during the festival, from 11-20 October. It is designed to offer a glimpse of the broader programme and convey the concept behind DOUBLE BILL through a concise and evocative experience lasting about half an hour. While engaging with the local industrial context and serving as a continuation of our event on colonial railroads, it is also aimed at expanding our outreach to larger audiences.

Guest Curation

A key aspect of this year’s festival is the system of guest curation, designed to make the screenings more organic, authentic, and socially responsible. Invited specialists, who are deeply embedded in specific communities—such as academics, activists, community leaders, and creatives—will contribute responses to the films, including essays, lists, poems, interviews, and playlists, and participate in post-screening panels.

Celebration of Commonalities, Recognition of Differences

Running through these six in-person and one online event is the celebration of commonalities and the recognition of differences. How do we stand in solidarity with one another in times of apartheid, disinformation, and double standards? How can we move beyond the binary thinking of the Cold War and recognise systems of oppression (and resistance) as intersecting parts of a larger whole? By bringing various communities together and facilitating vibrant, diverse, and cross-pollinating events, we aim to activate a process of learning (and much-needed unlearning)—a temporary utopia where voices that do not necessarily align can be heard together through thoughtful organisation. The festival is thus at once a community gathering and an educational event: similar to the model introduced by one of the festival’s titles, Tekla Aslanishvili’s brilliant study of railroads in the South Caucasus, A State in a State, it is a symphony that celebrates the multiplicity of human experience and resistance.

From Ukraine to Palestine, Occupation Is a Crime

Drawing on the topics that the festival has engaged with in previous years, SRFF 2024 reaffirms its commitment to certain struggles. Our opening night, dedicated to queer archives and reenactments, features Gil Baroni’s Casa Izabel, a colourful, Almodóvarian comedic thriller about queer resistance in Brazil and a spiritual successor to last year’s title, Sebastien Lifshitz’s Casa Susanna. The festival once again explores the occupation of Artsakh through the screening of Shoghakat Vardanyan’s 1489, a deeply moving and intimate first-person account of Azerbaijani aggression, which was awarded the main prize at IDFA, the world’s premier documentary film festival. Continuing our prior engagement with ESEA communities in Birmingham and Coventry, we’re also exploring the long-classified story of the racialised forced displacement of the Chinese Liverpudlians in Hester Yang’s The Undesirables. At the crux of SRFF 2024: DOUBLE BILL are two Palestinian-Ukrainian solidarity screenings meant to complement one another: the first celebrates Palestinian and Hustul cultures (Lamees Almakkawy’s Dancing Palestine and Marta Hryniuk’s and Nick Thomas’s Weightless), while the other militantly demystifies russian and zionist propaganda (Oksana Karpovych’s Intercepted and Kamal Aljafari’s Paradiso, XXXI, 108).

Site Specificity: Railroads, Industrial Infrastructures, and The British Petroleum Archives

If last year we engaged with the University of Warwick premises as part of a mediated tour around its art collection, this year we’re focusing on the industrial and transportation context of the Midlands by organising a series of online and in-person events about railroads in collaboration with the Transport Museum in Coventry and Grand Union in Birmingham. Specifically, we’re interested in examining the histories of British colonial infrastructures in Iran and Palestine (Sanaz Sohrabi’s Scenes of Extraction and Yiru Qian’s Sebastia Disagreement) and Soviet and russian colonialism in the South Caucasus (Tekla Aslanishvili’s A State in a State and Felix Kalmenson’s and Rouzbeh Akhbari’s A Passage). These events are particularly fitting as the University of Warwick was formerly sponsored by British Petroleum and still holds the BP archives that are accessible only to accredited researchers.

Research ⮂ Practice

At least three films at this year’s Screening Rights — Sebastia Disagreement, Dancing Palestine, and The Undesirables — were realised within academic infrastructures as part of practice-based MA programmes, while some of the others are the result of close collaboration with researchers and archives (A State in a State, A Passage, Scenes of Extraction, Neo Nahda, Weightless, Paradiso, Casa Izabel) or oral testimonies (Intercepted, 1489, The Medallion, Three Borders). In this regard, the festival — a hybrid endeavour in itself, partially funded by and originating from the University of Warwick — aims to connect local communities with the worlds of filmmaking and academia, while supporting the work of recent graduates, early-career filmmakers, and video artists, and expanding the boundaries of artistic research.

Bittersweet symphony

DOUBLE BILL is a theme open to experimentation, and even somewhat playful, which is particularly helpful when dealing with hard-hitting, challenging subject matter. Alongside feelings of anger and indignation, we also wanted to leave space for pensiveness, curiosity, and joy (reflected in our poster, featuring a still with Neo Nahda’s self-styled archivist protagonist). Admittedly, some events are difficult to “enjoy” in the traditional sense (and certain screenings even contain trigger warnings), but we hope that the audiences of the West Midlands learn something new and appreciate some of the most innovative works of socially engaged filmmaking in recent years.

The festival was researched, conceived, and facilitated by Misha Zakharov as part of his ongoing practice-based PhD project in Film & TV Studies at the University of Warwick. It was coordinated by Dr Pablo Alvarez and directed by Professor Michele Aaron.

The festival unequivocally stands with all oppressed groups whose stories it is indebted to: those fighting russian and western imperialism, those forcibly displaced, and queer and trans people.

Deeply moved and inspired by the Ukrainian Letter of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, the history of Crimean Tatar and Palestinian solidarity, and the stories of Palestinian-Ukrainians, we are centring both Palestine and Ukraine as part of our festival. As an initiative aimed at knowledge production, Screening Rights supports the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and is proud to screen moving images works highlighting 76 years of “israeli” occupation and the ongoing genocide of Palestinians, such as Paradiso, XXXI, 108, Dancing Palestine, and Sebastia Disagreement. Facilitated by a queer-identifying russian-born person of colour, the festival also supports the Ukrainian boycott of russian cultural production and is immensely grateful to present films that demystify and combat russian imperialism, such as Intercepted, Weightless, A State in a State, and Three Borders.

We are privileged to have the platform and resources to process the ongoing russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the “israeli” genocide of the Palestinian people, as well as the wave of racist pogroms and horrific acts of anti-trans violence in the UK. While we redistribute these resources — financial and intellectual — among audiences beyond the historically elitist context of British academia, we also recognise the limits of our own positionality. We acknowledge the University of Warwick’s complicity in the genocide of the Palestinian people through its continued financial ties with Moog, Rolls-Royce, and BAE Systems. We also recognise its former ties to the ecologically devastating British Petroleum (as well as the fact that Warwick still holds the BP archives on its premises), which became the impetus of our site-specific events on colonial infrastructures. Many struggles are beyond the scope of this year’s festival, such as those in Sudan and Congo, Rojava, Kashmir and East Turkestan, as well as the struggles of indigenous peoples in what are known as “russia”, “the united states of america”, “canada”, “australia”, and “new zealand”.

We urge you to donate to organisations that directly support the people related to the screenings, such as Vsesvit, kharpp, Queersvit, and Eurorelief. We hope that the guest responses accompanying the festival will offer suggestions that can enrich its context and provide further tools for exploring the issues it raises.

The venues hosting our screening events — Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry Transport Museum, and MAC Birmingham — are equipped to provide an accessible environment for audiences with disabilities, including wheelchairs available for visitors and accessible toilets. We will do our utmost to meet any access requirements to ensure no one is excluded. All three of our venues have lift access, and one has step-free access to the screening room. The three screens at the Warwick Arts Centre have designated seating for attendees with disabilities and step-free access via lift. The Midlands Arts Centre has installed two types of induction loop systems for visitors with hearing impairments, and its cinema also has designated wheelchair spaces that are kept off general sale.

Every film will be shown with English subtitles and/or in a captioned version to accommodate audiences with hearing impairments, as well as visitors whose first language is not English.

We’re keen to foster connections within and between communities, so if you’d like to attend the screenings as a group, we can offer promo codes for discounted tickets, as well as free tickets for unwaged persons and those in need.

Please email Screening Rights curator Misha Zakharov (misha.zakharov@warwick.ac.uk) and the festival coordinator Pablo Alvarez (pabloalvarezmurillo@gmail.com) for more details.

The directions to our three venues can be accessed on their respective websites:

Warwick Arts Centre

One alternative route to the Warwick Arts Centre for those travelling from other cities would be to disembark at Canley train station and take a 30-minute walk to the Warwick campus.

Coventry Transport Museum

MAC Birmingham

SRFF 2024 is looking for volunteers—film buffs, socially engaged citizens, and students—in Birmingham, Coventry, and the surrounding areas, to help greet our guests, distribute brochures and questionnaires before and after screenings, assist during post-screening discussions, and capture on-site photos and videos for our social media accounts. We’re offering free tickets to festival screenings and can cover your travel expenses—please email Screening Rights curator Misha Zakharov (misha.zakharov@warwick.ac.uk) and the festival coordinator Pablo Alvarez (pabloalvarezmurillo@gmail.com) for more details.

In line with this year’s programme, we are particularly eager to work with volunteers whose background or interests lie in the following regions:

— East Asia (especially China);
— Eastern Europe (especially Ukraine);
— Central Asia (especially Uzbekistan);
— South Caucasus (especially Armenia and Georgia);
— Latin America (especially Brazil);
— West Asia (especially Iran, Lebanon, and Palestine);
— East Africa (especially Ethiopia).

PARTNERS

Financial partners

Warwick Institute of Engagement
Film Hub Midlands

Organisational partners

Warwick Arts Centre
Midlands Arts Centre
Coventry Transport Museum
Grand Union

Outreach partner

Falasteen on Film