https://screeningrights.com Screening Rights Film Festival Tue, 24 Sep 2024 14:43:55 +0000 https://screeningrights.com en https://screeningrights.com/SCREENING-RIGHTS Wed, 11 Sep 2024 14:50:48 +0000 Screening Rights Film Festival https://screeningrights.com/SCREENING-RIGHTS <img width="318" height="261" width_o="318" height_o="261" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3255a7c70f75a52b94eda80793913ad577178afc92efa5572ef97d396500061d/SRFF-LOGO-3.svg" data-mid="218248687" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/318/i/3255a7c70f75a52b94eda80793913ad577178afc92efa5572ef97d396500061d/SRFF-LOGO-3.svg" /> SRFF 2024: DOUBLE BILL17—20 OCTOBER 2024BIRMINGHAM AND COVENTRY ABOUT︎ PROGRAMME AT A GLANCE︎ https://screeningrights.com/PROGRAMME-2024 Mon, 16 Sep 2024 11:50:31 +0000 Screening Rights Film Festival https://screeningrights.com/PROGRAMME-2024 SRFF 2024: DOUBLE BILL — PROGRAMME AT A GLANCE&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; Online overture October 11–20 ︎ Grand Union website, Birmingham ONE’S CONNECTION IS ANOTHER’S DIVISION: COLONIAL INFRASTRUCTURES IN SOUTH CAUCASUS AND PALESTINЕ︎&nbsp;37 mins SEBASTIA DISAGREEMENT (2023) dir. Yiru Qian (15 mins) A PASSAGE (2019) dir. Felix Kalmenson &amp; Rouzbeh Akhbari (22 mins)︎ Watch here Opening nightThursday, October 17 ︎ 18:00-21:00 ︎ Screen 3 at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry&nbsp; QUEER ARCHIVES AND REENACTMENTS IN LEBANON AND BRAZIL + Q&amp;A︎&nbsp;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 RAILROADS AND COLONIAL INFRASTRUCTURES IN SOUTH CAUCASUS AND IRAN + Q&amp;A︎ 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 PALESTINIAN-UKRAINIAN SOLIDARITY SCREENING 1: COLLECTING STORIES, PRESERVING CULTURE + Q&amp;A︎ DANCING PALESTINE (2024) dir. Lamees Almakkawy (37 mins) WEIGHTLESS (2023) dir. Marta Hryniuk &amp; Nick Thomas (70 mins) + Q&amp;A (60 mins) + after-screening reception (17:00-18:00) ︎ Tickets Saturday, October 19︎ 18:00-21:00︎ Cinema at MAC Birmingham PALESTINIAN-UKRAINIAN SOLIDARITY SCREENING 2: SCRUTINISING THE ENEMY + Q&amp;A︎ PARADISO, XXXI, 108 (2022) dir. Kamal Aljafari (18 mins) INTERCEPTED (2024) dir. Oksana Karpovych (95 mins)+ Q&amp;A (60 mins) + pre-screening reception (17:00-18:00)︎ Tickets Sunday, October 20︎ 14:00-17:00︎ Theatre at MAC Birmingham GENOCIDE, DISPLACEMENT, AND FAMILY HISTORIES IN ETHIOPIA AND ARMENIA + Q&amp;A︎ 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 KORYO-SARAM AND CHINESE LIVERPUDLIANS: STORIES OF EAST ASIAN FORCED DISPLACEMENT IN THE USSR AND THE UK + Q&amp;A︎ THE UNDESIRABLES (2022) dir. Hester Yang (19 mins) THREE BORDERS (2017) dir. Alisa Berger (55 mins)&nbsp; ︎ Tickets https://screeningrights.com/ONE-S-CONNECTION-IS-ANOTHER-S-DIVISION-COLONIAL-INFRASTRUCTURES-IN Wed, 18 Sep 2024 07:50:32 +0000 Screening Rights Film Festival https://screeningrights.com/ONE-S-CONNECTION-IS-ANOTHER-S-DIVISION-COLONIAL-INFRASTRUCTURES-IN Online overture October 11-20 ︎ Grand Union website, Birmingham ONE’S CONNECTION IS ANOTHER’S DIVISION:&nbsp; COLONIAL INFRASTRUCTURES IN SOUTH CAUCASUS AND PALESTINE SEBASTIA DISAGREEMENT by Yiru Qian (15 mins) A PASSAGE by Felix Kalmenson &amp; 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. <img width="2400" height="1441" width_o="2400" height_o="1441" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9f64c265742165e0d43159ecfc11726019a83292ab155a58e0904f8ccdd6e98e/SEBASTIA-DISAGREEMENT-2023.jpg" data-mid="218254205" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/9f64c265742165e0d43159ecfc11726019a83292ab155a58e0904f8ccdd6e98e/SEBASTIA-DISAGREEMENT-2023.jpg" />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. <img width="2400" height="1441" width_o="2400" height_o="1441" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c382434eed5b3eb55057c3dd7ae09b983326186cddf674f39ae8c9a3c9c3db9f/A-PASSAGE-2019.jpg" data-mid="218254197" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/c382434eed5b3eb55057c3dd7ae09b983326186cddf674f39ae8c9a3c9c3db9f/A-PASSAGE-2019.jpg" /> A PASSAGE Felix Kalmenson &amp; Rouzbeh Akhbari / 2019 / Armenia / 17’ / Armenian, Russian, Mandarin Chinese with English subtitles&nbsp; 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. https://screeningrights.com/QUEER-ARCHIVES-AND-REENACTMENTS-IN-LEBANON-AND-BRAZIL Mon, 16 Sep 2024 15:46:18 +0000 Screening Rights Film Festival https://screeningrights.com/QUEER-ARCHIVES-AND-REENACTMENTS-IN-LEBANON-AND-BRAZIL Opening night Thursday, October 17︎ 18:00-21:00︎ Screen 3 at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry QUEER ARCHIVES AND REENACTMENTSIN LEBANON AND BRAZIL NEO NAHDA by May Ziadé (12 mins)&nbsp; CASA IZABEL by Gil Baroni (85 mins)&nbsp; +Q&amp;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. <img width="2400" height="1441" width_o="2400" height_o="1441" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f8d9214965e0ce4983a75e9bcd0704c33cae183a7bdd84e9ce807feaa45967e9/NEO-NAHDA-2023.jpg" data-mid="218254401" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/f8d9214965e0ce4983a75e9bcd0704c33cae183a7bdd84e9ce807feaa45967e9/NEO-NAHDA-2023.jpg" />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.” <img width="2400" height="1441" width_o="2400" height_o="1441" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/38e750fe0515a773b6a85c879880d5aa59d5c869c70143f719493814ddc257a6/CASA-IZABEL-2022.jpg" data-mid="218254402" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/38e750fe0515a773b6a85c879880d5aa59d5c869c70143f719493814ddc257a6/CASA-IZABEL-2022.jpg" />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 &amp; TV PhD candidate at Warwick),&nbsp;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 &amp; 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&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;Read the full response here︎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 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.&nbsp;Read the full interview︎ GUEST CURATOR’S BIODaniel 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. https://screeningrights.com/RAILROADS-AND-COLONIAL-INFRASTRUCTURES-IN-SOUTH-CAUCASUS-AND-IRAN Wed, 18 Sep 2024 08:22:15 +0000 Screening Rights Film Festival https://screeningrights.com/RAILROADS-AND-COLONIAL-INFRASTRUCTURES-IN-SOUTH-CAUCASUS-AND-IRAN Friday, October 18 ︎ 18:00-20:40︎ Coventry Transport Museum&nbsp; RAILROADS AND COLONIAL INFRASTRUCTURES IN SOUTH CAUCASUS AND IRAN A STATE IN A STATE by Tekla Aslanishvili (46 mins)&nbsp; SCENES OF EXTRACTION by Sanaz Sohrabi (43 mins)&nbsp; + Q&amp;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. <img width="2400" height="1441" width_o="2400" height_o="1441" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/859ec1e0c1d30c88f4f26bfd0d99d4fb7aee185bedb1304fa4e718fb0c4fb46b/A-STATE-IN-A-STATE-2022.jpg" data-mid="218254310" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/859ec1e0c1d30c88f4f26bfd0d99d4fb7aee185bedb1304fa4e718fb0c4fb46b/A-STATE-IN-A-STATE-2022.jpg" />A STATE IN A STATETekla 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. <img width="2400" height="1441" width_o="2400" height_o="1441" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/31f02ac55aba855cc4021a4b7e21998a6d1073dccd935b16a600b3db890c6fb7/SCENES-OF-EXTRACTION-2023.jpg" data-mid="218254366" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/31f02ac55aba855cc4021a4b7e21998a6d1073dccd935b16a600b3db890c6fb7/SCENES-OF-EXTRACTION-2023.jpg" /> SCENES OF EXTRACTION Sanaz Sohrabi / 2023 / Canada/Iran / 43’ / English and Farsi with English subtitles&nbsp; 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&nbsp;food reception (17:00-18:00) by the freegan initiative&nbsp;The Real Junk Food Project Central.&nbsp; ENGINES OF SOLIDARITY: MILIJA GLUHOVIC INTERVIEWS EVELINA GAMBINO ON A STATE IN A STATE&nbsp; One of the reasons we have highlighted the stories of infrastructure again is not to idealise a presumably idyllic time of infrastructural life, such as that during the Soviet Union, against the present. Instead, it is to emphasise that, in unfavourable circumstances, both past and present, there is always something excessive, something different. There are always ways in which people can express solidarity with each other, and they can, in fact, create different infrastructural worlds. If we pay attention to these infrastructural worlds and to the logics that govern them, then a better, more equitable vision of infrastructure could potentially emerge. Read the full intervew here︎ 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 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.&nbsp;Read the full excerpt here︎ 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. https://screeningrights.com/PALESTINIAN-UKRAINIAN-SOLIDARITY-SCREENING-1-COLLECTING-STORIES Wed, 18 Sep 2024 08:55:16 +0000 Screening Rights Film Festival https://screeningrights.com/PALESTINIAN-UKRAINIAN-SOLIDARITY-SCREENING-1-COLLECTING-STORIES 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 &amp; Nick Thomas (70 mins)+ Q&amp;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.&nbsp; <img width="2400" height="1441" width_o="2400" height_o="1441" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9ed995a2e5aec4b0ce5680bc62f075589512d010b2fe4d6fae079ce6007a7ed3/DANCING-PALESTINE-2024.jpg" data-mid="218254372" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/9ed995a2e5aec4b0ce5680bc62f075589512d010b2fe4d6fae079ce6007a7ed3/DANCING-PALESTINE-2024.jpg" /> 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. <img width="2400" height="1441" width_o="2400" height_o="1441" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/61e2b776a65261f4785b770e07bc6a5ba44dfa7bc6fbc043727c30235d908d09/WEIGHTLESS-2023.jpg" data-mid="218254373" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/61e2b776a65261f4785b770e07bc6a5ba44dfa7bc6fbc043727c30235d908d09/WEIGHTLESS-2023.jpg" /> WEIGHLTESS Marta Hryniuk &amp; 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&nbsp;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 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.&nbsp;Read the full response︎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 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 response︎ GUEST CURATOR’S BIO&nbsp;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. https://screeningrights.com/PALESTINIAN-UKRAINIAN-SOLIDARITY-SCREENING-2-SCRUTINISING-THE-ENEMY Wed, 18 Sep 2024 10:01:02 +0000 Screening Rights Film Festival https://screeningrights.com/PALESTINIAN-UKRAINIAN-SOLIDARITY-SCREENING-2-SCRUTINISING-THE-ENEMY Saturday, October 19 ︎ 18:00-21:00︎ Cinema at MAC Birmingham PALESTINIAN-UKRAINIAN SOLIDARITY SCREENING 2: SCRUTINISING THE ENEMYPARADISO, XXXI, 108 by Kamal Aljafari (18 mins)&nbsp; INTERCEPTED by Oksana Karpovych (95 mins) + Q&amp;A (60 mins) + pre-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 second of these, featuring Kamal Aljafari’s Paradiso, XXXI, 108 and Oksana Karpovych’s Intercepted, is ingenious reclaiming of the russian and “israeli” military propaganda. Based on a simple premise — putting the enemy front and centre — both films demystify the logic (or lack thereof) and functioning (or rather dysfunctioning) of imperial regimes with stark clarity, without losing an ounce of humanity.Book your tickets for the first screening, featuring Lamees Almakkawy’s Dancing Palestine and Marta Hryniuk’s and Nick Thomas’s Weightless, here. <img width="2400" height="1441" width_o="2400" height_o="1441" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/66fba7e5e67816a294329fa4d608982790a027323a1995bde6478384a27a1b1c/PARADISO--XXXI--108-2022.jpg" data-mid="218254379" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/66fba7e5e67816a294329fa4d608982790a027323a1995bde6478384a27a1b1c/PARADISO--XXXI--108-2022.jpg" /> PARADISO, XXXI, 108 Kamal Aljafari / 2022 / Germany, State of Palestine / 18’ / Hebrew with English subtitles Already renowned for his work with archives, Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafari takes this engagement to a new level in the subtly sarcastic short Paradiso, XXXI, 108. Through the recontextualised images of military training and explosions, appropriated from the “israeli” state propaganda, Aljafari exposes the occupation army’s obsession with weaponry, masculinity, and the gamification of war. The fact that the film does not feature a single Palestinian person highlights the ongoing dehumanisation of Palestinians in the eyes of the death cult that is the zionist entity.Kamal Aljafari is a Palestinian filmmaker based in Berlin. He works with moving and still images, interweaving between fiction, non-fiction, and art. <img width="2400" height="1441" width_o="2400" height_o="1441" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/764671e9d9a457324e4aa533d1b3657d6865a812f31f2502281a10fdf5f8d2f6/INTERCEPTED-2024.jpg" data-mid="218254382" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/764671e9d9a457324e4aa533d1b3657d6865a812f31f2502281a10fdf5f8d2f6/INTERCEPTED-2024.jpg" /> INTERCEPTED Oksana Karpovych / 2024 / Canada, France, Ukraine / 95’ / Russian, Ukrainian with English subtitles Similarly to her full-length documentary debut, Don’t Worry, The Doors Will Open, shot on elektrychkas — the local trains that Ukrainians use to commute between large cities and smaller towns — Oksana Karpovych’s highly acclaimed Intercepted consists of oral testimonies. This time around, however, these belong not to Ukrainian commuters but to russian occupiers in Ukraine during the full-scale invasion, who are having phone conversations with their families back home. Intercepted and recorded by the Ukrainian military, these calls expose russians as fundamentally demoralised and often clueless as to the reasons for their presence in Ukraine. Soldiers openly confess to the worst war crimes, while their families encourage them to steal yet another household appliance. Through a simple yet overwhelmingly effective juxtaposition of harrowing audio recordings with the devastated natural and urban landscapes of Ukraine, the film names and shames the aggressor, all the while humanising those to whom it is dedicated: “ordinary Ukrainians, who fearlessly resist the imperialist russian machine.”Oksana Karpovych is a Ukrainian filmmaker based in Montreal. In her projects Karpovych explores everyday lives of the common people and how the state politics invades the personal sphere and the influence it has on the communities she intimately documents. The screening will be accompanied by a panel discussion, moderated by Belal Stitan (co-founer of Eurorelief, a charity delivering aid to Gaza) and featuring Abla Kandalaft (film programmer at the Garden Cinema, London) and guest curator, Ukrainian author Misha Honcharenko. The screening will be preceded by a reception (17:00-18:00), featuring traditional food from the Ukrainian Sunflower and Bayt Al-Yemeni. CONTENT WARNING: Please note that both films feature images and explicit audio descriptions of war and war crimes. Intercepted features Russian language, which may be triggering to some, including obscenities and language that denigrates Ukrainian people. CINEMATIC CONFRONTATIONS AND IMPERIAL ARCHIVES: PABLO ALVAREZ RESPONDS TO KAMAL ALJAFARI’S PARADISO, XXXI, 108 By re-ordering the footage or replacing the voiceover narration with elegiac classical music, the film creates an almost burlesque and absurd narrative of the already picturesque depictions of the IDF. Through this playful editing, Aljafari poses serious questions regarding the status of war images. “Was then Your image like the image I see now?” wonders the pilgrim contemplating the imprint of Christ’s face on the Veil of Veronica in Paradiso, the passage from Dante’s Divine Comedy that gives the title to Aljafari’s short film and is also referenced in a short story by Borges. Like Dante’s Paradiso, Aljafari’s film interrogates the reality of the image fabricated by the IDF in these fictional films.&nbsp;Read the full response︎ GUEST CURATOR’S BIO Pablo Alvarez is an independent researcher and film worker with an interest in the relationship between cinema, history, human rights, and social change. He is the co-director of Falasteen on Film, a community cinema showcasing Palestinian films in Birmingham, and also serves as a coordinator at Screening Rights. THE VIOLENCE OF SPEECH: MISHA HONCHARENKO RESPONDS TO OKSANA KARPOVYCH’S INTERCEPTED The film captures quiet moments that build up into an eerie unease — none of this is fabricated. It’s non-fiction, and life is much scarier than you imagine. It crawled under my skin, into my bones. True art should never make excuses in relation to reality. Never. The film's gaps and silences feel like black holes on a road. Read the full response︎ GUEST CURATOR’S BIO Misha Honcharenko is a queer Ukrainian artist and writer. He started diarising his experiences on his Instagram profile almost a decade ago, combining weird objects and landscapes with a photographic exploration of himself, all against the backdrop of the russian invasion. &nbsp; https://screeningrights.com/GENOCIDE-DISPLACEMENT-AND-FAMILY-HISTORIES-IN-ETHIOPIA-AND-ARMENIA Wed, 18 Sep 2024 10:03:13 +0000 Screening Rights Film Festival https://screeningrights.com/GENOCIDE-DISPLACEMENT-AND-FAMILY-HISTORIES-IN-ETHIOPIA-AND-ARMENIA Sunday, October 20 ︎ 14:00-17:00︎ Theatre at MAC Birmingham GENOCIDE, DISPLACEMENT, AND FAMILY HISTORIES IN ETHIOPIA AND ARMENIATHE MEDALLION by Ruth Hunduma (19 mins)&nbsp; 1489 by Shoghakat Vardanyan (76 mins) + Q&amp;A (60 mins)︎ 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 penultimate screening of its 10th-anniversary edition, subtitled DOUBLE BILL and aimed at fostering South-to-South solidarity, features Ruth Hunduma’s The Medallion alongside Shoghakat Vardanyan’s 1489 as part of an event exploring genocide, displacement, and family histories in Ethiopia and Armenia. <img width="2400" height="1407" width_o="2400" height_o="1407" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/2ce91a97a101b4b173f29b3f8b80460c1184452b4fff084f316b39bdaf113fe5/THE-MEDALLION-2023.jpg" data-mid="218254386" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/2ce91a97a101b4b173f29b3f8b80460c1184452b4fff084f316b39bdaf113fe5/THE-MEDALLION-2023.jpg" /> THE MEDALLION Ruth Hunduma / 2023 / Estonia, UK / 19’ / English Partially filmed in soothing 16 mm and featuring a heartfelt conversation between the filmmaker Ruth Hunduma and her mother about the latter’s experience of displacement, The Medallion movingly highlights the Ethiopian Civil War and Red Terror of the 1970s.Ruth Hunduma is an Ethiopian-Australian writer, director, actor and poet. <img width="2400" height="1441" width_o="2400" height_o="1441" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/daa02024784884005996d528f87e823bb5152ce158d5483674c23e12c705cfd5/1489-2023.jpg" data-mid="218254388" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/daa02024784884005996d528f87e823bb5152ce158d5483674c23e12c705cfd5/1489-2023.jpg" /> 1489 Shoghakat Vardanyan / 2023 / Armenia / 76’ / Armenian with English subtitles Shot primarily within her family home, Shoghakat Vardanyan’s 1489 is a deeply intimate, first-person account of her family’s attempts to locate her brother Soghomon, a soldier assigned the number 1489 after going missing in action in 2020, at the onset of the latest (and most devastating) cycle of Azerbaijani aggression, which culminated in the occupation of the ethnically Armenian republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) in autumn 2023. Filmed using a phone, Vardanyan’s stripped-down full-length documentary debut has the immediacy of war zone reportage, while also seeking grounding and solace in birds, her father’s artworks, and the natural landscape. Awarded the main prize at IDFA, the world’s premier documentary film festival, 1489 signals the arrival of a major filmmaking talent, highlighting her homeland’s beauty as well as its history of genocide and resistance.Shoghakat Vardanyan is a first-time Armenian filmmaker whose deeply intimate account of the 2020 Artsakh war, titled 1489, has been acclaimed at film festivals worldwide. The screening will be accompanied by a panel discussion featuring guest curator Anna-Maria Tesfaye and the filmmaker Ruth Hunduma, with more guests TBA. &nbsp; CONTENT WARNING: Please note 1489 contains scenes depicting human remains. SEEING ONESELF IN ANOTHER: ANNA-MARIA TESFAYE RESPONDS TO THE MEDALLIONIn my own activism at Queer Svit, where I work with LGBTQ+ and Global Majority individuals in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus, I see the ways in which that displacement—whether due to political persecution, war, or identity-based violence—continues to fracture communities and families. Yet, I also see how the sharing of stories, of family histories, can foster solidarity and healing, even among those from seemingly disparate contexts. This sense of connection is mirrored in The Medallion, as Hunduma’s work speaks not only to the Ethiopian experience but to all communities who have faced the erasure of their histories.&nbsp;Read the full response&nbsp;︎GUEST CURATOR’S BIO Anna-Maria Tesfaye is a London-based multimedia human rights journalist, producer, and Queer Black rights activist. She serves as the project manager at Queer Svit, an NGO that supports LGBT+ people in the EECCA region. MIRACLES DO NOT EXIST:HOVSEP RESPONDS TO SHOGHAKAT VARDANYAN'S 1489 Watching Shoghakat’s film was heartbreaking, like tearing into a newly healed wound. There are tender moments throughout—a beautiful family portrait—but the ending felt like complete darkness. No way out.Diplomacy feels like a distant memory. The borders are now less secure, and so is our faith. There are even fewer of us now. It will be harder, but the only thing we can do as a people is to keep going—to be, to build, to persevere. Grace will come through unity and hard work. I still believe. Read the full response and listen to Hovsep’s playlist of Armenian music ︎&nbsp; GUEST CURATOR’S BIO Hovsep is an Armenian musician and founder of HyperKavkaz, a label spotlighting diverse talent from the Caucasus region. As part of his response, he compiled a playlist of Armenian music with the inherent feel of sorrow and glimpses of hope. https://screeningrights.com/KORYO-SARAM-AND-CHINESE-LIVERPUDLIANS-STORIES-OF-EAST-ASIAN-FORCED Wed, 18 Sep 2024 10:05:59 +0000 Screening Rights Film Festival https://screeningrights.com/KORYO-SARAM-AND-CHINESE-LIVERPUDLIANS-STORIES-OF-EAST-ASIAN-FORCED Closing night 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 UKTHE UNDESIRABLES by Hester Yang (19 mins)&nbsp; THREE BORDERS by Alisa Berger (55 mins) + Q&amp;A (60 mins)︎ 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 closing night of its 10th-anniversary edition, subtitled DOUBLE BILL and aimed at fostering South-to-South solidarity, features The Undesirables, Hester Yang’s short about the Chinese Liverpudlians, alongside Three Borders, Alisa Berger’s mid-length essay about the (post-)Soviet Koreans. <img width="2400" height="1441" width_o="2400" height_o="1441" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/31b20f82abb487f04cf72da7d044fcea3e7b8a1e844ec791836c92f91a162bb6/THE-UNDESIRABLES-2022.jpg" data-mid="218254396" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/31b20f82abb487f04cf72da7d044fcea3e7b8a1e844ec791836c92f91a162bb6/THE-UNDESIRABLES-2022.jpg" /> THE UNDESIRABLES Hester Yang / 2022 / UK / 19’ / English with English subtitles Hester Yang’s short film The Undesirables unpacks the traumatic and long-classified history of the Chinese men who were working as dockers in Liverpool during World War II. When the war ended, they were deemed no longer necessary, made redundant, and deported to China overnight, leaving behind families and children they had fathered in Liverpool. Similarly to some of the other works of artistic research at this year’s Screening Rights — Dancing Palestine and Sebastia Disagreement — The Undesirables was realised as part of an MA project (specifically, an MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography that the filmmaker undertook at the University of the Arts London). It organically combines extensive archival work and interviews with the descendants of the sailors, conducted by Yang in Liverpool, alongside images of water as metaphors for seafaring, migration, and displacement. The film has toured extensively across the UK, including screenings in Liverpool (Open Eye Gallery), Manchester (esea contemporary), and London (the New Contemporaries show at the Camden Arts Centre), and is now being presented in Birmingham for the first time. Hester Yang is a London-based filmmaker, photographer, and emerging curator with a particular interest in alternative means of documentary storytelling. <img width="2400" height="1441" width_o="2400" height_o="1441" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/bdb2ba4edf414f1c97629ccc1fa0e5bde8ca48e09e58dfe08889aef90e9d13d7/THREE-BORDERS-2017.jpg" data-mid="218254400" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/bdb2ba4edf414f1c97629ccc1fa0e5bde8ca48e09e58dfe08889aef90e9d13d7/THREE-BORDERS-2017.jpg" /> THREE BORDERS Alisa Berger / 2017 / Germany / 55’ / English, Russian, German with English subtitles In her hypnotic, labyrinthine mid-length film essay Three Borders, Alisa Berger, a Germany-based filmmaker of Korean and Jewish descent, tackles her intricate family history that spans multiple countries and the turbulent history of the 20th century. Intriguingly for this screening, Berger recounts the story of her mother, Tatjana, who is Koryo-saram — a Soviet Korean. In 1937, Koryo-saram were forcibly displaced from the Far East of the Russian SSR to Central Asia as part of a secret racist operation launched by Stalin’s government, which was rearranging multiple populations and indigenous peoples due to perceived “anti-Soviet activities”. Realised in monochrome and subdued colours, and utilising material archives and oral testimonies, Three Borders highlights the plurality of diasporic experiences and the lesser-known, suppressed narratives of racialised displacement in the USSR. Originally conceived as part of a larger media installation, it is being shown in the UK for the first time.Alisa Berger is a filmmaker of Korean and Jewish descent, who was born in Dagestan, raised in Ukraine, and is now based in Germany. She creates films and installations, often through a collaborative process, which are accompanied by, created, altered, or destroyed during performative interventions. The screening will be accompanied by a panel discussion, featuring guest curators Misha Zakharov and Qinghan Chen, as well as the filmmakers Hester Yang and Alisa Berger.&nbsp; TRACING THE UNMOURNED PHANTOM IN AN ERASED HISTORY: QINGHAN CHEN RESPONDS TO HESTER YANG’S THE UNDESIRABLES In The Undesirables, Hester Yang shifts the focus to the families of the unwelcome Chinese seamen. These Eurasian descendants emphasise that although they look Chinese, they do not speak Mandarin and do not understand Chinese culture. I felt a sense of Chineseness hovering around these descendants, as though it were a ghost. Entangled with this spectral presence is the family secret that has never been mentioned or properly addressed. Unlike the philosopher Jacques Derrida’s spectre, which hovers between life and death, presence and absence, and causes established certainties to vacillate, the ghost haunting these narrators is more akin to the notion of the phantom described by psychoanalysts Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok in their exploration of transgenerational trauma and family secrets. They argue that undisclosed traumas of previous generations might disturb the lives of their descendants, even if, and especially when, they know nothing about their distant causes.&nbsp;Read the full response︎&nbsp; GUEST CURATOR’S BIO Qinghan Chen is a graduate student in Film and Television Studies at the University of Warwick. She enjoys hiking, writing, and slow cinema. BUT WHERE ARE YOU REALLY FROM?&nbsp; MISHA ZAKHAROV RESPONDS TO ALISA BERGER’S THREE BORDERS As part of my ongoing, on-again, off-again personal inquiry into the filmic representations of Koryo-saram culture, I have gathered many examples of under-seen cinematic and moving image works. Below is my list, shared in response to Alisa Berger’s film, with the hope that these stories will be disseminated further: Kolkhoz Avant-Garde (1946);Ariran Ensemble (1973);Rashid Nugmanov’s The Needle (1988);Yermek Shinarbayev’s Revenge (1989);Lavrenti Song’s Koryo-saram (1993);Vadim Pak’s Deportation (1997);Y. David Chung’s and Matt Dibble’s Koryo Saram: The Unreliable People (2007);Kim Soyoung’s Exile Trilogy: Heart of Snow, Heart of Blood (2014), Sound of Nomad: Koryo Arirang (2017), and Goodbye My Love, NK (2019).Read the full response︎&nbsp; GUEST CURATOR’S BIO Misha Zakharov is a russian-born, queer-identifying person of Korean descent (he/they), a political immigrant, and a London-based author and film worker. He is currently completing a practice-based PhD project in Film &amp; TV Studies at the University of Warwick, as part of which he curates Screening Rights, West Midlands’ festival of socially engaged and formally innovative cinema, and researches film festivals as sites of (un)learning and solidarity. https://screeningrights.com/GUEST-RESPONSES Tue, 24 Sep 2024 14:43:55 +0000 Screening Rights Film Festival https://screeningrights.com/GUEST-RESPONSES 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.&nbsp; UNCOVERING QUEER ARCHIVES IS A RADICAL ACT OF RESISTANCE: FILMS OF RESISTANCE RESPONDS TO MAY ZIADE’S NEO NAHDA LINK︎QUEER REFUGIUM AND RESISTANCE AMIDST FASCIST STATES: DANIEL ZACARIOTTI INTERVIEWS GIL BARONI ON CASA IZABEL LINK ︎ENGINES OF SOLIDARITY: MILIJA GLUHOVIC INTERVIEWS EVELINA GAMBINO ON A STATE IN A STATE &nbsp;LINK︎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 &amp; 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 &nbsp;LINK ︎SEEING ONESELF IN ANOTHER: ANNA-MARIA TESFAYE RESPONDS TO RUTH HUNDUMA’S THE MEDALLION LINK︎ TRACING THE UNMOURNED PHANTOM IN AN ERASED HISTORY: QINGHAN CHEN RESPONDS TO HESTER YANG’S THE UNDESIRABLES LINK︎BUT WHERE ARE YOU REALLY FROM? MISHA ZAKHAROV RESPONDS TO ALISA BERGER’S THREE BORDERS LINK︎