SRFF 2024: DOUBLE BILL — PROGRAMME AT A GLANCE
Online overture
October 11–20
︎ Grand Union website, Birmingham
October 11–20
︎ Grand Union website, Birmingham
ONE’S CONNECTION IS ANOTHER’S DIVISION: COLONIAL INFRASTRUCTURES IN SOUTH CAUCASUS AND PALESTINЕ︎
37 minsSEBASTIA DISAGREEMENT (2023) dir. Yiru Qian (15 mins)
A PASSAGE (2019) dir. Felix Kalmenson & Rouzbeh Akhbari (22 mins)
︎ Watch here
Opening night
Thursday, October 17
︎ 18:00-21:00
︎ Screen 3 at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry
Thursday, October 17
︎ 18:00-21:00
︎ Screen 3 at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry
QUEER ARCHIVES AND REENACTMENTS IN LEBANON AND BRAZIL + Q&A︎
NEO NAHDA (2023) dir. May Ziadé (12 mins)
CASA IZABEL (2022) dir. Gil Baroni (85 mins)
︎ Tickets
Friday, October 18
︎ 18:00-20:40
︎ Coventry Transport Museum
︎ 18:00-20:40
︎ Coventry Transport Museum
RAILROADS AND COLONIAL INFRASTRUCTURES IN SOUTH CAUCASUS AND IRAN + Q&A︎
A STATE IN A STATE (2022) dir. Tekla Aslanishvili (46 mins)
SCENES OF EXTRACTION (2023) dir. Sanaz Sohrabi (43 mins)
︎ Tickets
Saturday, October 19
︎ 14:00-17:00
︎ Cinema at MAC Birmingham
︎ 14:00-17:00
︎ Cinema at MAC Birmingham
PALESTINIAN-UKRAINIAN SOLIDARITY SCREENING 1: COLLECTING STORIES, PRESERVING CULTURE + Q&A︎
DANCING PALESTINE (2024) dir. Lamees Almakkawy (37 mins)
WEIGHTLESS (2023) dir. Marta Hryniuk & Nick Thomas (70 mins)
+ Q&A (60 mins)
+ after-screening reception (17:00-18:00)
︎ Tickets
Saturday, October 19
︎ 18:00-21:00
︎ Cinema at MAC Birmingham
︎ 18:00-21:00
︎ Cinema at MAC Birmingham
PALESTINIAN-UKRAINIAN SOLIDARITY SCREENING 2: SCRUTINISING THE ENEMY + Q&A︎
PARADISO, XXXI, 108 (2022) dir. Kamal Aljafari (18 mins)
INTERCEPTED (2024) dir. Oksana Karpovych (95 mins)
+ Q&A (60 mins)
+ pre-screening reception (17:00-18:00)
︎ Tickets
Sunday, October 20
︎ 14:00-17:00
︎ Theatre at MAC Birmingham
︎ 14:00-17:00
︎ Theatre at MAC Birmingham
GENOCIDE, DISPLACEMENT, AND FAMILY HISTORIES IN ETHIOPIA AND ARMENIA + Q&A︎
THE MEDALLION (2023) dir. Ruth Hunduma (19 mins)
1489 (2023) dir. Shoghakat Vardanyan (76 mins)
︎ Tickets
Closing night
Sunday, October 20
︎ 18:00-20:30
︎ Theatre at MAC Birmingham
Sunday, October 20
︎ 18:00-20:30
︎ Theatre at MAC Birmingham
KORYO-SARAM AND CHINESE LIVERPUDLIANS: STORIES OF EAST ASIAN FORCED DISPLACEMENT IN THE USSR AND THE UK + Q&A︎
THE UNDESIRABLES (2022) dir. Hester Yang (19 mins)
THREE BORDERS (2017) dir. Alisa Berger (55 mins)
︎ Tickets
Online overture
October 11-20
︎ Grand Union website, Birmingham
ONE’S CONNECTION IS ANOTHER’S DIVISION:
COLONIAL INFRASTRUCTURES IN SOUTH CAUCASUS AND PALESTINE
SEBASTIA DISAGREEMENT by Yiru Qian (15 mins)
A PASSAGE by Felix Kalmenson & Rouzbeh Akhbari (17 mins)
︎ Watch here
Screening Rights Film Festival 2024: DOUBLE BILL, taking place over the weekend of 17-20 October in Birmingham and Coventry, will be preceded by an online overture hosted by the Birmingham-based arts initiative Grand Union. This will be available on the Grand Union website immediately before and during the festival, from 11 to 20 October. The screening of two short films aims to broaden the context of the in-person events, as well as extend their outreach.
Titled ONE’S CONNECTION IS ANOTHER’S DIVISION: COLONIAL INFRASTRUCTURES IN SOUTH CAUCASUS AND PALESTINE and featuring Sebastia Disagreement by Yuri Qian and A Passage by Felix Kalmenson and Rouzbeh Akhbari, the overture deepens the festival’s engagement with the industrial heritage of the Midlands while also resonating formally and thematically with multiple festival titles.
In particular, it serves as a continuation of a screening on railroads and colonial infrastructures in South Caucasus and Iran, hosted at the Transport Museum in Coventry on 18 October. It also connects with two Palestinian-Ukrainian solidarity screenings (1 and 2), taking place at MAC Birmingham on 19 October, and an event focused on genocide, displacement, and family histories in Ethiopia and Armenia, also at MAC Birmingham, on 20 October.
The overture is designed to give guests a glimpse of the broader programme and to convey the concept behind DOUBLE BILL through a concise and evocative experience lasting about half an hour.
Titled ONE’S CONNECTION IS ANOTHER’S DIVISION: COLONIAL INFRASTRUCTURES IN SOUTH CAUCASUS AND PALESTINE and featuring Sebastia Disagreement by Yuri Qian and A Passage by Felix Kalmenson and Rouzbeh Akhbari, the overture deepens the festival’s engagement with the industrial heritage of the Midlands while also resonating formally and thematically with multiple festival titles.
In particular, it serves as a continuation of a screening on railroads and colonial infrastructures in South Caucasus and Iran, hosted at the Transport Museum in Coventry on 18 October. It also connects with two Palestinian-Ukrainian solidarity screenings (1 and 2), taking place at MAC Birmingham on 19 October, and an event focused on genocide, displacement, and family histories in Ethiopia and Armenia, also at MAC Birmingham, on 20 October.
The overture is designed to give guests a glimpse of the broader programme and to convey the concept behind DOUBLE BILL through a concise and evocative experience lasting about half an hour.
SEBASTIA DISAGREEMENT
Yiru Qian / 2023 / UK / 15’ / Arabic, English with written English
Through highly inventive methods of physical and immaterial visualisation — digital 3D models and screen capture, as well as miniaturised re-enactments using hands, maps, gypsum models, and even puppetry, with marionette oranges serving as stand-ins for the legendary Jaffa fruit — filmmaker-researcher Yiru Quan unpacks the zionist occupation of Masudiya and Sebastia stations, once crucial sites for Palestinian agricultural activities and historically important transit points on the Hejaz railway, which connected cities across North Africa and the Middle East.
A PASSAGE
Felix Kalmenson & Rouzbeh Akhbari / 2019 / Armenia / 17’ / Armenian, Russian, Mandarin Chinese with English subtitles
Oil trucks with Farsi on them, a children’s choir singing in Armenian, an Armenian man singing about the now-discontinued Yerevan-Baku railway in Russian, and the haunting, enigmatic images of two horsemen with mirrors for faces, who search for wind as if to help a nowhere-to-be-seen plane take off and carry a ghostly image of a train through a derelict Soviet-era tunnel — the Meghri region in southern Armenia, which borders Azerbaijan, emerges as a territory in-between languages, cultures, temporalities, and, as discussed by radio hosts in Mandarin Chinese and Russian in the background, neoimperialist geopolitical interests in the South Caucasus and the Middle East.
FILMMAKERS’ BIOS
Yiru Qian is an architect and visual artist who currently lives and works in London. Influenced by her interests in architectural design, archival research, and the archaeology of knowledge, she explores historical narratives that traverse time and space through imagery, mapping, and making.
Pejvak is the long-term collaboration between Felix Kalmenson and Rouzbeh Akhbari. Through their multivalent, intuitive approach to research and living they find themselves in a convergence and entanglement with like-minded collaborators, histories and various geographies.
Opening night Thursday, October 17
︎ 18:00-21:00
︎ Screen 3 at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry
QUEER ARCHIVES AND REENACTMENTS
NEO NAHDA by May Ziadé (12 mins)
CASA IZABEL by Gil Baroni (85 mins)
+Q&A (60 mins)
︎ Tickets
︎ 18:00-21:00
︎ Screen 3 at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry
QUEER ARCHIVES AND REENACTMENTS
IN LEBANON AND BRAZIL
NEO NAHDA by May Ziadé (12 mins)
CASA IZABEL by Gil Baroni (85 mins)
+Q&A (60 mins)
︎ Tickets
On the opening night of its 10th anniversary, Screening Rights is staging a special event at Warwick Arts Centre centred around queer archives and reenactments from Lebanon and Brazil and featuring May Ziadé’s short Neo Nahda alongside Gil Baroni’s feature Casa Izabel. Equal parts vivid reconstruction and ingenious fictionalisation of the narratives that have been suppressed or underrepresented due to the turbulent histories of the Middle East and Latin America, Ziadé’s and Baroni’s films, each in their unique way, outline queer genealogies and combat epistemic oblivion.
NEO NAHDA
May Ziadé / 2022 / UK / 12’ / English
In French-Lebanese filmmaker May Ziadé’s Neo Nahda, Mona, a young woman in modern-day London, goes down a rabbit hole of amateur research after coming across photographs of Arab women cross-dressing in 1920s Lebanon. Rich with photographic influences — Maryam Şahinyan, Van Leo, and Marie al-Khazen come to mind — Neo Nahda fuses together images discovered by Ziadé in the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut with inventions of her own. The result is an electrifying queer renaissance of sorts, hinted at in the film’s title (Nahda being the Islamic modernist movement — ‘the Awakening’ — of the early 20th century).
May Ziadé is a French and Lebanese filmmaker and filmworker based in London, whose work “explores the physical and emotional consequences of the cultural and social pressures to conform.”
CASA IZABEL
Gil Baroni / 2023 / Brazil / 85’ / Portuguese with English subtitles
Created in a similarly playful dialogue with the queer narratives of the past, Gil Baroni’s Casa Izabel was loosely inspired by the real-life story of Casa Susanna, a bungalow hidden in the woods of upstate New York where a group of transgender women and cross-dressing men would clandestinely convene and find refuge in the mid-20th century. While its function largely remains the same, in Baroni’s colourful, Almodóvarian comedic thriller, Casa is transported to the depths of the Brazilian forest of the 1960s. The story of the original Casa is given a deliciously dark twist, complicated by jealousy, racial and class tensions, and lurking political intrigue à la Kiss of the Spider Woman. It is a work of speculative fiction that is as indebted to Casa Susanna as it is to the tradition of Brazilian anti-fascist resistance.
Gil Baroni is a writer, director, and producer born in Brazil. His filmography approaches themes surrounding human rights issues, especially minority empowerment, gender equity, the LGBTQI+ universe, and social class struggle.
The screening will be accompanied by video introductions from the filmmakers and followed by a discussion featuring invited guests. The panellists will include guest curator Daniel Zacariotti (Film & TV PhD candidate at Warwick), actress and film curator Sarah Agha (of The Arab Film Club), the Queer Research Network (Airelle Amedro, Aman Sinha, and Polina Zelmanova, all PhD candidates at Warwick), and Misha Zakharov (curator at Screening Rights and Film & TV PhD candidate at Warwick).
GUEST RESPONSES
UNCOVERING QUEER ARCHIVES IS A RADICAL ACT OF RESISTANCE: FILMS OF RESISTANCE RESPONDS TO MAY ZIADE’S NEO
GUEST CURATOR’S BIO
Films of Resistance is a decentralised community film screening and fundraising resource that believes in the power of cinema to expose, inspire, reflect, frame and reframe; its ability to incite change and resistance on a local and global level. With documentary and fiction films chosen for their artistic impact, the initiative aims to inspire deep thinking, understanding, compassion, and — ultimately — long-term, sustainable and active resistance to the genocide and oppression of the Palestinian people.
Archiving is an addictive form of resistance, especially when you uncover hidden treasures such as those that Mona finds during the course of May Ziadé’s Neo Nahda. Having come across a century-old photograph of cross-dressed Arab women, Mona finds herself feverishly following traces of queer Arab culture in London’s archives. Through an artistic counterpositioning of archival and filmed footage, Ziadé shows the self-exploratory effect of uncovering queer histories from the mainstream historical narrative — a reminder of the power of resistance in revealing alternative histories that global supremacy structures continuously attempt to suppress. Read the full response here︎
GUEST CURATOR’S BIO
Films of Resistance is a decentralised community film screening and fundraising resource that believes in the power of cinema to expose, inspire, reflect, frame and reframe; its ability to incite change and resistance on a local and global level. With documentary and fiction films chosen for their artistic impact, the initiative aims to inspire deep thinking, understanding, compassion, and — ultimately — long-term, sustainable and active resistance to the genocide and oppression of the Palestinian people.
QUEER REFUGIUM AND RESISTANCE AMIDST FASCIST STATES:
DANIEL ZACARIOTTI INTERVIEWS GIL BARONI ON CASA IZABEL
GUEST CURATOR’S BIO
Daniel Zacariotti is currently a PhD Candidate at the University of Warwick. His work is focused on queer art forms under far-right and fascist governments in Latin America, with a decolonial and intersectional epistemological approach.
DANIEL ZACARIOTTI INTERVIEWS GIL BARONI ON CASA IZABEL
Set in Brazil in the early 1970s, during the military dictatorship, Casa Izabel depicts a group of men who gather annually, away from society, to cross-dress in a Casa Grande (the term used for the grand houses of slavers in colonial Brazil, as opposed to the Senzalas where the enslaved lived). By encapsulating the possibility of queer existence during a repressive government that enforced the erasure of deviant sexualities and genders, the film presents a contemporary intersectional reading of queerness, race, and class – balancing the film’s 1970s setting with the context of its production and distribution under Bolsonaro’s government. Read the full interview︎
GUEST CURATOR’S BIO
Daniel Zacariotti is currently a PhD Candidate at the University of Warwick. His work is focused on queer art forms under far-right and fascist governments in Latin America, with a decolonial and intersectional epistemological approach.
Friday, October 18
︎ 18:00-20:40
︎ Coventry Transport Museum
A STATE IN A STATE by Tekla Aslanishvili (46 mins)
SCENES OF EXTRACTION by Sanaz Sohrabi (43 mins)
+ Q&A (60 mins)
+ pre-screnening food reception (17:00-18:00)
︎ Tickets
︎ 18:00-20:40
︎ Coventry Transport Museum
RAILROADS AND COLONIAL INFRASTRUCTURES IN SOUTH CAUCASUS AND IRAN
A STATE IN A STATE by Tekla Aslanishvili (46 mins)
SCENES OF EXTRACTION by Sanaz Sohrabi (43 mins)
+ Q&A (60 mins)
+ pre-screnening food reception (17:00-18:00)
︎ Tickets
Screening Rights Film Festival is bringing the latest socially engaged and formally innovative cinema from the Global South to audiences in the West Midlands. This year, we’re partnering with the Transport Museum in Coventry to stage a site-specific event that engages with the industrial heritage of the Midlands, as well as the British Petroleum archives at the University of Warwick. Titled RAILROADS AND COLONIAL INFRASTRUCTURES IN SOUTH CAUCASUS AND IRAN, it features Tekla Aslanishvili’s A State in a State alongside Sanaz Sohrabi’s Scenes of Extraction—two film essays that evoke detective investigations in the thoroughness of their research. In line with the 2024 festival’s theme, DOUBLE BILL, the screening tackles various geographical contexts that, on closer inspection, can be linked—in this case, British petrocolonialism in Iran and Soviet railroads in the South Caucasus.
A larger context for this screening is provided through an online programme, hosted by Screening Rights in collaboration with the Birmingham-based arts initiative Grand Union, titled ONE’S CONNECTION IS ANOTHER’S DIVISION: COLONIAL INFRASTRUCTURES IN SOUTH CAUCASUS AND PALESTINE, featuring Sebastia Disagreement by Yiru Qian and A Passage by Felix Kalmenson and Rouzbeh Akhbari.
A larger context for this screening is provided through an online programme, hosted by Screening Rights in collaboration with the Birmingham-based arts initiative Grand Union, titled ONE’S CONNECTION IS ANOTHER’S DIVISION: COLONIAL INFRASTRUCTURES IN SOUTH CAUCASUS AND PALESTINE, featuring Sebastia Disagreement by Yiru Qian and A Passage by Felix Kalmenson and Rouzbeh Akhbari.
A STATE IN A STATE
Tekla Aslanishvili / 2022 / Georgia / 47’ / Georgian, Russian, and English with English subtitles
In her symphonic, richly multilingual documentary, Georgian filmmaker Tekla Aslanishvili collects oral testimonies from railway workers, journalists, and researchers who worked on or around the railways that connect(ed) Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan with Russia, Turkey, and Iran. Over time, these railway workers developed chains of solidarity that transcended the politics of the nation-states to which they belonged. Although many of the railways are classified and therefore prohibited from filming, they emerge as somewhat of a protagonist in the film—the titular semi-autonomous “state within a state,” historically an instrument of colonisation, now being used to turn the tables on the oppressors.
Tekla Aslanishvili is an artist, filmmaker and essayist whose works emerge at the intersection of infrastructural design, history and geopolitics.
SCENES OF EXTRACTION
Sanaz Sohrabi / 2023 / Canada/Iran / 43’ / English and Farsi with English subtitles
In the second part of her ongoing trilogy on British petrocolonialism in Iran—following the acclaimed One Image, Two Acts (2020)—Iranian filmmaker Sanaz Sohrabi delves deeper into the declassified photographic archives of British Petroleum to uncover haunting stories of labour exploitation, ecological devastation, and extractivism, focussing specifically on the role railroads played within the larger colonial infrastructures. The screening of this work is intended to engage with the industrial heritage of the Midlands, as well as the British Petroleum archives housed at the University of Warwick.
Sanaz Sohrabi is an artist, filmmaker and essayist whose work investigates the impermanence and malleability of historical records and narratives.
The screening will be accompanied by a panel discussion, featuring guest curator Milija Gluhovic, researcher Evelina Gambino, and filmmaker Yiru Qian (more guests TBA). The screening will be preceded by a food reception (17:00-18:00) by the freegan initiative The Real Junk Food Project Central.
An interview between academics Milija Gluhovic and Evelina Gambino on A State in a State forthcoming.
Evelina Gambino is the Margaret Tyler Research Fellow in Geography at Girton College, University of Cambridge. Her research is concerned with a situated analysis of global logistics. She has done ethnographic work around several flagship connectivity infrastructures in Georgia and the South Caucasus. In collaboration with artist and director Tekla Aslanishvili she has produced the experimental documentary A State in A State.
Milija Gluhovic is an Associate Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of Warwick. His research interests include contemporary European theatre and performance, memory studies and psychoanalysis, discourses of European identity, migration and human rights, as well as religion, secularity, and politics.
Evelina Gambino is the Margaret Tyler Research Fellow in Geography at Girton College, University of Cambridge. Her research is concerned with a situated analysis of global logistics. She has done ethnographic work around several flagship connectivity infrastructures in Georgia and the South Caucasus. In collaboration with artist and director Tekla Aslanishvili she has produced the experimental documentary A State in A State.
Milija Gluhovic is an Associate Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of Warwick. His research interests include contemporary European theatre and performance, memory studies and psychoanalysis, discourses of European identity, migration and human rights, as well as religion, secularity, and politics.
ON OIL WORKERS’ LABOUR MILITANCY:
AN EXCERPT FROM KATAYOUN SHAFIEE’S MACHINERIES OF OIL
Katayoun Shafiee is an Associate Professor in the History of the Middle East at the University of Warwick. She specialises in the history and material politics of large-scale infrastructures in the modern Middle East. Her first book, Machineries of Oil: An Infrastructural History of BP in Iran (MIT Press, 2018), integrates Middle Eastern history with interdisciplinary approaches in science and technology studies, reconfiguring the politics of the region through an examination of the British-controlled oil industry in Iran.
AN EXCERPT FROM KATAYOUN SHAFIEE’S MACHINERIES OF OIL
Oil’s unique physical and chemical properties demand that each category of work—drilling, pipeline construction, well maintenance, transportation, and refining—utilizes specific kinds of skilled and unskilled laborers such as drillers, pipeline fitters, engineers, geologists, and chemists. The layout and design of oil infrastructure, namely, that it has an enclave character and requires oil wells, a pipeline, and a refinery to transform the oil into marketable products, result in distinct methods of monitoring and surveillance of workers. The oil workers’ capacity to form unions and “engage in strike activity” is drastically reduced, especially when considering that other sources of oil can be relied on and tankers can be rerouted to replace a sudden loss of oil elsewhere. Thus, one reason oil companies have succeeded in making enormous profits has been “their ability to contain labor militancy.” Where labor militancy has occurred, it has generally been concentrated in refinery operations where there are large concentrations of skilled workers who occupy strategic positions to disrupt the economies of both oil-exporting and oil-consuming countries. Over time, pumping stations and pipelines replaced railways as the main means of transporting a liquid form of energy, rather than a solid, from the site of production to refineries and tankers for shipping abroad. This meant the infrastructure of oil operations was vulnerable but not as easy to incapacitate through strike actions as were railways that carried coal, for example. Read the full excerpt here︎
Katayoun Shafiee is an Associate Professor in the History of the Middle East at the University of Warwick. She specialises in the history and material politics of large-scale infrastructures in the modern Middle East. Her first book, Machineries of Oil: An Infrastructural History of BP in Iran (MIT Press, 2018), integrates Middle Eastern history with interdisciplinary approaches in science and technology studies, reconfiguring the politics of the region through an examination of the British-controlled oil industry in Iran.
Saturday, October 19
︎ 14:00-17:00
︎ Cinema at MAC Birmingham
PALESTINIAN-UKRAINIAN SOLIDARITY SCREENING 1: COLLECTING STORIES, PRESERVING CULTURE
DANCING PALESTINE by Lamees Almakkawy (37 mins)
WEIGHTLESS by Marta Hryniuk & Nick Thomas (70 mins)
+ Q&A (60 mins)
+ after-screening reception (17:00-18:00)
︎ Tickets
︎ 14:00-17:00
︎ Cinema at MAC Birmingham
PALESTINIAN-UKRAINIAN SOLIDARITY SCREENING 1: COLLECTING STORIES, PRESERVING CULTURE
DANCING PALESTINE by Lamees Almakkawy (37 mins)
WEIGHTLESS by Marta Hryniuk & Nick Thomas (70 mins)
+ Q&A (60 mins)
+ after-screening reception (17:00-18:00)
︎ Tickets
Screening Rights Film Festival is bringing the latest socially engaged and formally innovative cinema from the Global South to audiences in the West Midlands. The centrepiece of its 10th-anniversary edition, subtitled DOUBLE BILL, consists of two Palestinian-Ukrainian solidarity screenings designed to complement one another. The first of these, featuring Lamees Almakkawy’s Dancing Palestine and Marta Hryniuk’s and Nick Thomas’s Weightless, is dedicated to resisting the perpetual, ages-long genocides through cultural preservation.
Book your tickets for the second screening, featuring Kamal Aljafari’s Paradiso, XXXI, 108 and Oksana Karpovych’s Intercepted, here.
Book your tickets for the second screening, featuring Kamal Aljafari’s Paradiso, XXXI, 108 and Oksana Karpovych’s Intercepted, here.
DANCING PALESTINE
Lamees Almakkawy / 2024 / UK / 37’ / Arabic, English with English subtitles
“When home is gone, the body becomes home.” At the heart of Lamees Almakkawy’s mid-length film essay Dancing Palestine is dabke, historically a workers' dance that has, over time, evolved into a form of remembrance and resistance. Through an ingenious and deeply moving interplay between the material and immaterial, the past and the present, the film combines digital screen-life elements, analogue archives, and dabke performances set against photos of Palestinian landscapes projected onto the dancers’ bodies. Drawing on the same theme of Palestinian cultural preservation that was prominent in last year’s Screening Rights title, Jumana Manna’s Foragers, Almakkawy’s film posits dabke as a defiant, life-affirming celebration of Palestinian culture in the face of its perpetual extermination. Completed as part of her Creative Documentary by Practice MFA at the Anthropology Department of University College London, and realised in close collaboration with Palestinian dabke dancers, Almakkawy’s film premiered at the latest Sheffield Doc, the premier documentary film festival in the UK, where it received a Special Mention prize.
Lamees Almakkawy obtained her Bachelor of Arts in Film and New Media from New York University Abu Dhabi, and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Documentary by Practice from University College London. Her interests lie in the intersection of documentary and fiction filmmaking, focusing on identity, performance, and memory.
WEIGHLTESS
Marta Hryniuk & Nick Thomas / 2023 / Netherlands, Ukraine / 70’ / English, Ukrainian with English subtitles
Khrystyna Bunii is an anthropologist who collects the culture of the Hutsuls, a unique ethnographic group of people living in the west of Ukraine. Marta Hryniuk’s and Nick Thomas’s Weightless follows Bunii as she digitises family photos, collects clothes and food recipes, and records tsymbaly music and oral histories of displacement and genocide. What emerges is a fragile yet ever-persistent culture situated at a politically tumultuous crossroads of cultures, languages, and ideologies, one that has been — and continues to be — resisting erasure. While Alisa Kovalenko’s We Will Not Fade Away, screened as part of last year’s Screening Rights, was filmed in the bleak east of Ukraine, where russia’s war has been raging for a decade, Weightless takes place in the breathtaking Carpathian Mountains before the start of the russian full-scale invasion, presenting a different perspective by highlighting the unruly beauty of the natural landscape and Hutsul culture.
Marta Hryniuk and Nick Thomas are visual artists, filmmakers, and cultural organisers based in Rotterdam, where they established the film collective WET film.
The screening will be accompanied by a panel discussion, moderated by Falasteen on Film and featuring guest curator Stefan Lacny (UCL), filmmakers Lamees Almakkawy, Marta Hryniuk and Nick Thomas, and humanitarian expert and healthcare worker Yafa Ajweh. The screening will be followed by a reception (17:00-18:00), featuring traditional food from the the Ukrainian Sunflower and Bayt Al-Yemeni.
LEGACY IN MOTION:
ALA AL-ZENATI RESPONDS TO LAMEES ALMAKKAWY’S DANCING PALESTINE
GUEST CURATOR’S BIO
Ala Al-Zenati is a Palestinian activist and founder of a community called Jadeela Heritage, which is dedicated to preserving and celebrating Palestinian culture. She focuses on teaching younger generations about the stories and songs passed down from her grandparents, fostering a deeper connection to their heritage.
ALA AL-ZENATI RESPONDS TO LAMEES ALMAKKAWY’S DANCING PALESTINE
The selection of archival images was a meticulous process. Almakkawy sought images that would best support the narrative she wanted to convey—one that depicted Palestinians as more than victims of occupation. She wanted to avoid reinforcing the common narrative of Palestinians as solely defined by their struggles. Instead, she aimed to empower them by showing their vibrant cultural life, their resilience, and their deep love for life. The archival images chosen for the film reflect this approach, depicting Palestinians celebrating, working, and living life to the fullest, often in the face of adversity. Read the full response︎
GUEST CURATOR’S BIO
Ala Al-Zenati is a Palestinian activist and founder of a community called Jadeela Heritage, which is dedicated to preserving and celebrating Palestinian culture. She focuses on teaching younger generations about the stories and songs passed down from her grandparents, fostering a deeper connection to their heritage.
STEFAN LACNY RESPONDS TO MARTA HRYNIUK’S AND NICK THOMAS’S WEIGHTLESS
GUEST CURATOR’S BIO
Stefan Lacny is a Lecturer in Russian Culture, Language and Translation at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UCL. He has recently completed a PhD in Slavonic Studies at the University of Cambridge, where his doctoral research examined Soviet cinematic depictions of Poles and Ukrainians from 1925 to 1941, in the context of the Soviet annexation of eastern Poland in 1939. His interests include Soviet nationalities policies, Stalin-era formulations of Soviet Ukrainian identity and the significance of borders in the Soviet cultural imagination. His article "(Re)discovering Ukrainianness: Hutsul Folk Culture and Ukrainian Identity in Soviet Film, 1939-1941" was published this year in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema.
Through images of long-concealed photographs and recorded folk displays, the documentary showcases the originality of the Hutsuls’ traditional clothing, songs and musical instruments, all shot against a scenic Carpathian background. Yet Hutsul life is far from idyllic. Bunii uncovers the region’s present-day economic difficulties and the persecution of its people under Soviet rule. As Bunii attempts to present the highlanders’ past through their own pictures and words, she is hindered by the Hutsuls’ reluctance to discuss their historical experiences. In this reflection on repression and memory, perhaps the most striking takeaway is the gap of communication and understanding that persists between Ukrainians from the lowlands and the Hutsuls, who remain stubbornly resistant to efforts by outsiders to tell their story. Read the full response︎
GUEST CURATOR’S BIO
Stefan Lacny is a Lecturer in Russian Culture, Language and Translation at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UCL. He has recently completed a PhD in Slavonic Studies at the University of Cambridge, where his doctoral research examined Soviet cinematic depictions of Poles and Ukrainians from 1925 to 1941, in the context of the Soviet annexation of eastern Poland in 1939. His interests include Soviet nationalities policies, Stalin-era formulations of Soviet Ukrainian identity and the significance of borders in the Soviet cultural imagination. His article "(Re)discovering Ukrainianness: Hutsul Folk Culture and Ukrainian Identity in Soviet Film, 1939-1941" was published this year in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema.
Guest responses
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.
Guest curation and responses by Daniel Zacariotti, Films of Resistance, Milija Gluhovic, Ala Al-Zenati, Stefan Lacny, Misha Honcharenko, Pablo Alvarez, Hovsep, Anna-Maria Tesfaye, Misha Zakharov, and Qinghan Chen.
- UNCOVERING QUEER ARCHIVES IS A RADICAL ACT OF RESISTANCE: FILMS OF RESISTANCE RESPONDS TO MAY ZIADE’S NEO NAHDA LINK︎
- QUEER REFUGIUM AND RESISTANCE AMIDST FASCIST STATES: DANIEL ZACARIOTTI INTERVIEWS GIL BARONI ON CASA IZABEL LINK ︎
- MILIJA GLUHOVIC INTERVIEWS EVELINA GAMBINO ON A STATE IN A STATE LINK FORTHCOMING
- ON OIL WORKERS’ LABOUR MILITANCY: AN EXCERPT FROM KATAYOUN SHAFIEE’S MACHINERIES OF OIL LINK ︎
- A LEGACY IN MOTION: ALA AL-ZENATI RESPONDS TO LAMEES ALMAKKAWY’S DANCING PALESTINE LINK ︎
- MEMORY, IDENTITY, AND THE WEIGHT OF HISTORY: STEFAN LACNY RESPONDS TO MARTA HRYNIUK’S & NICK THOMAS’S WEIGHTLESS LINK ︎
- CINEMATIC CONFRONTATIONS AND IMPERIAL ARCHIVES: PABLO ALVAREZ RESPONDS TO KAMAL ALJAFARI’S PARADISO, XXXI, 108 LINK ︎
- THE VIOLENCE OF SPEECH: MISHA HONCHARENKO RESPONDS TO OKSANA KARPOVYCH’S INTERCEPTED LINK ︎
- MIRACLES DO NOT EXIST: HOVSEP RESPONDS TO SHOGHAKAT VARDANYAN'S 1489 LINK ︎
- SEEING ONESELF IN ANOTHER: ANNA-MARIA TESFAYE RESPONDS TO RUTH HUNDUMA’S THE MEDALLION LINK︎
- TRACING THE UNMOURNED PHANTOM IN AN ERASED HISTORY: QINGHAN CHEN RESPONDS TO HESTER YANG’S THE UNDESIRABLES LINK︎
- BUT WHERE ARE YOU REALLY FROM? MISHA ZAKHAROV RESPONDS TO ALISA BERGER’S THREE BORDERS LINK FORTHCOMING
Guest response
QUEER REFUGIUM AND RESISTANCE AMIDST FASCIST STATES: DANIEL ZACARIOTTI INTERVIEWS GIL BARONI ON CASA IZABEL
Producer and director Gil Baroni gained widespread recognition in 2019 with his third feature film, Alice Júnior, a coming-of-age story about a trans girl preparing for her first kiss in a conservative setting. The film premiered in 2019 as part of the Generation section of the 70th Berlin International Film Festival and won several awards at major Brazilian festivals, including the Felix Award for best national film at the Rio Film Festival and four awards at the Brasília Film Festival. Following Alice Júnior, Baroni continued to focus on queer and dissident narratives, with his latest work, Casa Izabel. Baroni's fourth feature film, which was shot in 2019 and released in 2022, moves away from the upbeat tone of Alice Júnior to explore a more intersectional critique of Brazil's past.
Set in Brazil in the early 1970s, during the military dictatorship, Casa Izabel depicts a group of men who gather annually, away from society, to cross-dress in a Casa Grande (the term used for the grand houses of slavers in colonial Brazil, as opposed to the Senzalas where the enslaved lived). By encapsulating the possibility of queer existence during a repressive government that enforced the erasure of deviant sexualities and genders, the film presents a contemporary intersectional reading of queerness, race, and class – balancing the film’s 1970s setting with the context of its production and distribution under Bolsonaro’s government.
To what extent was Casa Izabel influenced by the book and documentary Casa Susanna?
Casa Izabel was initially the idea of the actress who plays Dália in the film, Laura Haddad. Laura approached Diana, the film’s distributor, and said, “Look, I have this book here, Casa Susanna; it's a book of photographs.” She wanted to bring the concept of a refuge, a retreat for cross-dressers, to Brazil. Diana then got in touch with me, and when she showed me the photos, I immediately said, “I'm interested.” We then brought in Luiz Bertazzo, our scriptwriter, and began a creative process that gradually detached itself from Casa Susanna and became Casa Izabel. I say “detached” because, at the time, we didn’t know who the people in the book were – it was simply an enigmatic collection of photographs.
A book that, at first glance, appeared to be about men who practised cross-dressing, but as the documentary later revealed, it was not only about cross-dressing men but also about the trans women who attended the retreat. Casa Izabel, unlike Casa Susanna, doesn’t focus on trans women but rather on cross-dressing. Our challenge was to develop a script based on these photos and a cast Laura had already suggested. From there, we decided the film had to be set during the dictatorship, reflecting a Brazil under a military coup and the rule of AI-5, yet one that had just won the World Cup. [Institutional Act Number Five, commonly known as AI-5, was the fifth of seventeen extra-legal Institutional Acts issued by the military government in the years following the 1964 Brazilian coup d'état.] This context added depth to our narrative: what if some of these men were in the military and attended this secluded retreat to live out their fantasies? What if, amongst these white men, there was a black character? And what if this house was a former slave house in southern Brazil? The house itself dates back to the period of slavery, located in a region known as ‘Brazilian Europe’. Casa Izabel is an original story created by Luiz Bertazzo, deeply connected to our present and our past.
As you mentioned, the film portrays a highly intersectional reading of Brazil and its era – particularly intertwining queerness and race through the character Leila. Could you elaborate on why this character is present in Casa Izabel?
I see Leila as the protagonist. Leila has a marker that cannot be hidden: her skin colour. She is already excluded from the possibility of escaping into the fantasy that the other characters indulge in when they come to this house to escape their lives and practise cross-dressing. Leila brings discomfort to these characters, who seek to live in a fantasy world within this house. Leila is a boy under the care of his adoptive white mother, who, in the film’s setting, is fated to serve Izabel, the house owner. But Leila subverts this structure. She subverts this logic. She uses debauchery to expose the farce of the other characters, who imagine themselves as actresses and writers. She mocks a structure that is destined to end, a structure that is about to collapse with the end of the dictatorship. It is a structure that will soon open the door to a more racially literate and activist Brazil.
Thus, Leila represents the complexities of racial struggle within Casa Izabel. She embodies the rupture of white hegemony, of a master-servant dynamic. Leila also signifies the end of this house. In keeping with the film's narrative, which unfolds over the course of a day and ends with the house in flames, Leila questions the house’s inability to evolve, despite having had its glory days. For me, this body, this character, is a challenge in the sense that she is always mocking and aware of being an uncomfortable presence. Leila shows that this house is not inviolable, as an undercover government agent will later confirm in the film. Leila breaks the sanitised view of white private property as something sacrosanct. The house, initially perceived as a place of refuge and safety, reveals its flaws and corruption as Leila charts her course through it. It is a house that shelters military officers. It is a slave house. It is a house full of murderers. Leila broadens the conversation around Casa Izabel: it is not just a film about cross-dressing, but about race, affection, and resistance – a film that balances vulnerability and strength.
Although set during the dictatorship, Casa Izabel was filmed at the start of Bolsonaro’s administration in 2019 and premiered at the end of his government in 2022. How does the film reflect those times?
Casa Izabel undoubtedly interrogates both the period in which its characters exist and the time in which the film is being released. We must revisit the far right and Brazilian fascism because they are still very much part of our daily lives. Bolsonaro’s administration was a form of fascism, though not experienced in the same way as traditional fascism or as it was known during the dictatorship. It was a complete corruption of institutions, disguised as a defence of the family, good morals, and Christian values. It appropriated arguments that were dear to society and turned them into instruments to promote violent ideals. Casa Izabel questions this argument through three elements central to society: the territory, the house, and the body. We are dealing with a territory under military rule, a house with slaveholding roots, and queer and black bodies. In other words, we are centring dissident bodies in the narrative to challenge fascist values. Casa Izabel becomes an outcry, a return to a violent past in an attempt to understand a repressive present. The idea was conceived before Bolsonaro’s government, filmed during it, and released at its end.
So, the film is not just an attempt to understand the past but to position itself in an increasingly uncertain present. Moreover, through the house’s space, we offer a critique of Brazil’s distant yet still present past: the slave-owning roots of colonial Brazil. This is why it was crucial for us to position Leila as the protagonist and the only black character, the one who ignites the fire that burns the house at the end. This past must be destroyed; its roots must cease to exist entirely. There can be no room for these values in contemporary Brazil. This rupture must be decisive and everlasting. The central message of the film is precisely this: resilient bodies, which even today suffer oppression, take into their own hands the means to destroy those who ostracise them.
How have the critics and audience perceived the film?
The film has had an exciting run at festivals. In its debut at CINE PE, one of the most important festivals in Brazil, it won five awards, including Best Film. Overall, the reactions have often been dichotomous. Some use great superlatives that impress me, while others say the film tries to tackle too many themes and becomes confusing. However, I see the value in these layers; after all, they reflect our society. We've had incredible screenings, such as the opening session of the 12º Olhar de Cinema – Festival Internacional de Cinema de Curitiba, at the Ópera de Arame in Curitiba, in front of more than 1,600 people. We've also received some negative feedback from festivals, which, to me, confirms the relevance of Casa Izabel. After all, it’s cinema’s role to question spaces, and, in turn, to be questioned.
Considering that this interview is directed towards Screening Rights Film Festival in the United Kingdom, is there any message you want people to take from the film and this interview?
Well, you're in a land of significant colonisers. I don’t think we can ignore the fact that colonisation is inseparable from slavery. That must never be forgotten. Furthermore, we need to be actively engaged with social movements and the resistance and ruptures they create. Only then will one message be clear: people will not give up the rights they have fought for. And they won’t stop until we all share the same rights; we want nothing less. It’s time to listen to those who have been continuously silenced and to stop any attempt to silence them.
GUEST CURATOR’S BIO
Daniel Zacariotti is currently a PhD Candidate at the University of Warwick. His work is focused on queer art forms under far-right and fascist governments in Latin America, with a decolonial and intersectional epistemological approach.
Daniel Zacariotti
Gil Baroni
Guest response
ON OIL WORKERS’ LABOUR MILITANCY: AN EXCERPT FROM KATAYOUN SHAFIEE’S MACHINERIES OF OIL
Oilfields, pipelines, and refineries became the sites of powerful political battles throughout the Middle East in the twentieth century. [...] Oil’s unique physical and chemical properties demand that each category of work—drilling, pipeline construction, well maintenance, transportation, and refining—utilizes specific kinds of skilled and unskilled laborers such as drillers, pipeline fitters, engineers, geologists, and chemists.
The layout and design of oil infrastructure, namely, that it has an enclave character and requires oil wells, a pipeline, and a refinery to transform the oil into marketable products, result in distinct methods of monitoring and surveillance of workers. The oil workers’ capacity to form unions and “engage in strike activity” is drastically reduced, especially when considering that other sources of oil can be relied on and tankers can be rerouted to replace a sudden loss of oil elsewhere.
Thus, one reason oil companies have succeeded in making enormous profits has been “their ability to contain labor militancy.” Where labor militancy has occurred, it has generally been concentrated in refinery operations where there are large concentrations of skilled workers who occupy strategic positions to disrupt the economies of both oil-exporting and oil-consuming countries.
Over time, pumping stations and pipelines replaced railways as the main means of transporting a liquid form of energy, rather than a solid, from the site of production to refineries and tankers for shipping abroad. This meant the infrastructure of oil operations was vulnerable but not as easy to incapacitate through strike actions as were railways that carried coal, for example.
Book your tickets for Scenes of Extraction, Sanaz Sohrabi’s film essay on the British petrocolonialism in Iran, here.
AUTHOR’S BIO
Katayoun Shafiee is an Associate Professor in the History of the Middle East at the University of Warwick. She specialises in the history and material politics of large-scale infrastructures in the modern Middle East. Her first book, Machineries of Oil: An Infrastructural History of BP in Iran (MIT Press, 2018), integrates Middle Eastern history with interdisciplinary approaches in science and technology studies, reconfiguring the politics of the region through an examination of the British-controlled oil industry in Iran.
Guest response
A LEGACY IN MOTION: ALA AL-ZENATI RESPONDS TO LAMEES ALMAKKAWY’S DANCING PALESTINE
Dancing Palestine is a 37-minute documentary that explores the deep cultural resilience embodied in the traditional Palestinian dance, dabke. The film poignantly captures how this dance has transcended its origins to become a powerful form of resistance and a vessel for collective memory among Palestinians, who face not only land occupation but also continuous socio-political challenges and threats of cultural erasure.
The documentary opens by shedding light on the scarcity of accessible Palestinian archival materials. Many of these archives have been destroyed, hidden, or remain inaccessible, an attempt to erase the evidence of Palestinian existence on their land. This is one of the major challenges in finding neutral archives that depict Palestinians simply living their lives, as noted by the director, Lamees Almakkawy. However, the film also highlights the efforts of incredible communities who are working to make their personal family archives available to the public. These efforts aim to counter the narrative that Palestine never existed, or that Palestinians lacked a rich culture.
As the camera pans across several archival images that vividly depict the cultural memory of Palestine, the narrator introduces the roots of dabke. Originally a communal dance among workers and communities before the Nakba, dabke has evolved into a cultural symbol that embodies Palestinian heritage and has become closely associated with resistance, particularly after the Nakba. Almakkawy carefully selected these images to ensure they depicted Palestinians in their natural state, outside the context of occupation, to show them as a standalone identity. This approach was crucial to Almakkawy, who sought to tell the story of Palestinians living their lives, celebrating their culture, and preserving their identity through dance.
The director masterfully blends archival footage of Palestinian families simply living their lives with intimate interviews of dabke dancers. These dancers emphasize that dabke has grown beyond its role as a traditional dance, now serving as a means of cultural preservation and resistance—a form of archiving in itself. When asked about the inspiration behind Dancing Palestine, Almakkawy explained:
“I was curious about the dance because I knew there was a political undertone to it. You can tell by the lyrics of the songs and the movements in the dance. I wanted to understand the history behind the dance, why it is significant to Palestinians, and why they perform it everywhere. This led me to start my research, and in general, my work focuses on performance, identity, and collective memory. Dabke was the perfect combination of all these elements.”
To ensure authenticity in representing Palestinian experiences, Almakkawy immersed herself in various forms of Palestinian storytelling. She attended performances, exhibitions, and shows, listening closely to how Palestinians narrate their own history. This deep engagement with Palestinian voices was fundamental to her creative process, allowing her to build the documentary’s narrative from a place of respect and understanding. Almakkawy conducted conversations with dabke dancers, academics, and researchers, which served as the backbone of the film. From these interviews, she carefully extracted parts that formed the foundation of the documentary, aligning them with archival materials that reflected the Palestinian narrative.
In a particularly striking segment, the documentary showcases dabke dancers in the diaspora, capturing them as they choreograph new dances. Almakkawy felt it was essential to not only show the performances but also the creative process behind them—the careful consideration of each movement, and the stories these movements tell. By filming the dancers as they create, the documentary provides a window into how dabke continues to evolve as a living tradition, constantly adapting to new contexts while remaining rooted in the past.
The selection of archival images was a meticulous process. Almakkawy sought images that would best support the narrative she wanted to convey—one that depicted Palestinians as more than victims of occupation. She wanted to avoid reinforcing the common narrative of Palestinians as solely defined by their struggles. Instead, she aimed to empower them by showing their vibrant cultural life, their resilience, and their deep love for life. The archival images chosen for the film reflect this approach, depicting Palestinians celebrating, working, and living life to the fullest, often in the face of adversity.
Almakkawy’s deliberate choices in both the archival material and the documentary’s structure align with her overarching message: Palestinians should not be victimized. She emphasized that throughout the filmmaking process, she was mindful of avoiding the typical narrative that tends to victimize Palestinians. “I think a lot of times when you see stories about Palestine, they tend to follow a similar narrative, one that often results in victimizing Palestinians,” she noted. “I didn’t want to victimize them—I wanted to empower them. I don’t think Palestinians want our pity; they want us to act so that they won’t disappear. The biggest takeaway from this film is that Palestinians just want to live their lives. They have a deep love of life, and they insist on living it. We just need to allow them to live.”
The documentary effectively conveys this message, illustrating how dabke has become a tool not just for cultural preservation but also for asserting identity and resisting erasure. Through its careful combination of archival images, interviews, and dance performances, Dancing Palestine tells a story of resilience, creativity, and the enduring spirit of a people determined to preserve their heritage and identity against all odds.
By the film’s conclusion, viewers are left with a profound understanding of how dabke embodies the Palestinian struggle and their unwavering determination to maintain their culture. Almakkawy’s vision for Dancing Palestine is clear: to portray Palestinians as vibrant, resilient people who refuse to be defined by their circumstances. Through dabke, they assert their existence, their history, and their right to live and thrive on their own terms.
Ultimately, Dancing Palestine serves as a testament to the power of art as a form of resistance and the importance of cultural preservation in the face of ongoing challenges. Almakkawy’s documentary is not just a film about a dance; it is a powerful statement on the resilience of the Palestinian people and their unyielding commitment to preserving their identity and heritage for future generations.
GUEST CURATOR’S BIO
Ala Al Zenati is a Palestinian activist and founder of a community called Jadeela Heritage, which is dedicated to preserving and celebrating Palestinian culture. She focuses on teaching younger generations about the stories and songs passed down from her grandparents, fostering a deeper connection to their heritage.
Ala Al Zenati
Guest response
MEMORY, IDENTITY, AND THE WEIGHT OF HISTORY: STEFAN LACNY RESPONDS TO MARTA HRYNIUK’S & NICK THOMAS’S WEIGHTLESS
Marta Hryniuk and Nick Thomas’ 2023 documentary Weightless follows young anthropologist Khrystyna Bunii as she travels through the Carpathian mountains of western Ukraine conducting research among the Hutsul highlanders. The Hutsuls, one of three highland groups native to Ukraine’s Eastern Carpathians (alongside the Lemkos and the Boikos), are known for the distinctiveness of their traditional folk culture, elements of which are seen throughout the film. Recorded in the year before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the film documents Bunii’s experiences going from village to village, conversing with local highlanders and digitising their family photo collections. The resulting exchanges and images form the basis for the work’s explorations of the region and its complex, often painful past. Bunii and even the directors themselves feature openly as participants as well as narrators, combining observations of the Hutsuls with reflections on family histories and the national past.
Weightless is a film framed around historical memory. As such, it is fitting that the documentary focuses on the Hutsuls, a group to whom Ukrainians have often turned when reflecting on their own national history and identity. The centrality of the Hutsuls in cultural works exploring Ukrainian selfhood may appear paradoxical after a brief consideration of the highlanders’ history. Today the Hutsuls are regarded as a subset of Ukrainians and possess a folk heritage that shares commonalities with that of neighbouring Ukrainian regions. Yet even a century ago the national allegiance of this remote highland people was far from settled. Since the late nineteenth century, the Hutsuls, who are believed to have diverse ethnic origins, have repeatedly found themselves at the crossroads of rival national and imperial projects (Polish, Ukrainian, Habsburg and Soviet) that have each at times sought to embrace Hutsul culture and appropriate it for their own political ends. Furthermore, well into the twentieth century, members of the Hutsul community had a variety of political allegiances ranging from advocates for Ukrainian independence to supporters of Polish statehood as well as those defining themselves more in regional terms.
Despite this contested heritage (or perhaps because of it), Hutsuls have become the object of much Ukrainian cultural production. During the 1900s, prominent Ukrainian writers including Ivan Franko, Mykola Kotsiubyns’kyi and Lesia Ukrainka summered in the Hutsul region, conducted ethnography there and penned literary works set in the Carpathians. Later in the 1960s, directors of the Ukrainian poetic cinema movement looked to the Hutsuls in search of a Ukrainian identity untainted by Soviet rule, producing Hutsul-themed films such as Sergei Paradzhanov’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965, itself adapted from a novel by Kotsiubyns’kyi). Weightless continues the tradition of Ukrainian artists turning to the Hutsul region to depict its inhabitants and, in the process, to ask fundamental questions about themselves.
Through images of long-concealed family photographs and recorded folk displays, the documentary showcases the originality of Hutsul traditional clothing, songs and musical instruments, interspersed between picturesque views of the Carpathian landscape. Yet Hutsul life is far from idyllic. Wide shots of wooded mountain slopes are overlaid with the distant sound of chainsaws, highlighting the problem of illegal logging that threatens the highlanders’ native natural environment. As Bunii waits at a bus stop, the camera reveals a poster advertising rafting, drawing attention to tourism in the region, which (now as at previous moments in history) presents both an economic lifeline to the Hutsuls and a threat to their traditional livelihoods. Perhaps the most animated we see any local in conversation with Bunii is an elderly lady bemoaning the financial precariousness facing young Hutsuls, who must either make a meagre living on the land or leave to seek greater stability in the city.
At the heart of Weightless are Bunii’s attempts to talk to villagers about the repression inflicted on their region under Stalinist rule. Having been divided between Poland and Romania during the interwar period, the Hutsul region was annexed by the USSR following the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact, then invaded by Germany in 1941 before being recaptured by the Red Army in 1944. Over the next decade, the Hutsuls endured harsh persecution for their perceived opposition to Soviet power, and some highlanders fought with Ukrainian nationalist forces (UPA) against Soviet troops into the 1950s. The scars from this violent past emerge gradually throughout the film. In conversation with Bunii, elderly Hutsuls refer to Soviet torture, guerrilla warfare and even personal experience of deportation to Siberia. Reminders of these Kremlin-directed terror operations strike a poignant note today in light of Russia’s ongoing aggression that continues to claim the lives of Ukrainians from across the country.
Strikingly, however, the Hutsuls are deeply reluctant to discuss their historical experiences. Despite her efforts to overcome ‘superficial’ narratives about the region and to allow the Hutsuls to express themselves in their own voices, Bunii finds the highlanders unwilling to talk about Stalin-era repression in anything beyond factual terms. At moments, the researcher expresses her frustration at the villagers’ reticence through her voiceover contributions and her voice messages sent to directors Hryniuk and Thomas, in which she is left speculating as to the reasons for their silence.
In part, as Bunii suggests, this is attributable to the lasting effects of the trauma inflicted by Stalinist repression. Another factor, however, lies in the Hutsuls’ wary attitude towards outsiders. Given the numerous attempts of lowlanders from multiple nationalities and ideologies over the last 150 years to co-opt Hutsul culture and speak on their behalf, we can understand how the Hutsuls in Weightless remain stubbornly resistant to attempts by outsiders (including other Ukrainians) to tell their story or impose historical narratives onto them. In this sense, the film exposes the gap of communication and understanding that persists between Hutsuls and Ukrainians from the lowlands. Bunii looks towards the Carpathians to explore the role played by the region in Ukraine’s recent national history. For the Hutsuls, by contrast, remaining largely silent beyond their own community about historical oppression becomes itself an expression of dignity and selfhood.
GUEST CURATOR’S BIO
Stefan Lacny is a Lecturer in Russian Culture, Language and Translation at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UCL. He has recently completed a PhD in Slavonic Studies at the University of Cambridge, where his doctoral research examined Soviet cinematic depictions of Poles and Ukrainians from 1925 to 1941, in the context of the Soviet annexation of eastern Poland in 1939. His interests include Soviet nationalities policies, Stalin-era formulations of Soviet Ukrainian identity and the significance of borders in the Soviet cultural imagination. His article "(Re)discovering Ukrainianness: Hutsul Folk Culture and Ukrainian Identity in Soviet Film, 1939-1941" was published this year in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema.
Stefan Lacny