December 5 – 7:00 PM
IN PERSON Filmarche, Lahnstraße 25, 12055 – Berlin
Join us as we take a look through the eyes of three Palestinian artists. The programme includes an introduction to the Gaza Strip as a microcosm for the failure of civilisation, a journey across the heavily militarised Sinai Peninsula, and a portrait of masculine performativity in East Jerusalem.
After the screening, stay for a conversation between filmmakers Basma al-Sharif, Shadi Habib Allah, and Jumana Manna. The discussion will be moderated by artist and writer Bassem Saad.
Film program
Daga’a, Shadi Habib Allah, 19 min, Palestinian Territory (2015)
Led by a network of Bedouin smugglers, Shadi Habib Allah embarks on a journey across the heavily militarised Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. Navigating an unmapped terrain, the smugglers’ only signposts are the stories they share about the stakes of living, dying, and traversing this mysterious space. Shot by Habib Allah over a number of months, the nonlinear film recounts several journeys in which the artist passes through one Bedouin network and into another, as if he himself were goods being smuggled.
Shadi Habib Allah’s practice ranges from film, sculpture and drawing to installation. While each project defines its own terms based on research and physical engagement, a common thread is the opening up of suggestive modes of navigation across circulation networks of people, technologies, objects, images and economy, in order to examine ideas of use and value and the structures that hold them in place.
Born in Jerusalem, Palestine in 1977, Shadi Habib Allah received a BFA from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in 2003 and an MFA from Columbia University in 2010.
Home Movies Gaza, Basma al-Sharif, 23 min, Palestine (2013)
Arabic (English subtitles)
An introduction to the Gaza Strip as a microcosm for the failure of civilization. In an attempt to describe the everyday of a place that struggles for the most basic of human rights, this video claims a perspective from within the domestic spaces of a territory that is complicated, derelict, and altogether impossible to separate from its political identity.
Basma al-Sharif (b. 1983) is a Palestinian artist working in cinema and installation. She developed her practice nomadically between the Middle East, Europe, and North America and is currently based in Berlin. Her practice looks at cyclical political conflicts and confronts the legacy of colonialism through satirical, immersive, and lyrical works.
She received an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2007, was a resident of the Fondazione Antonio Ratti in 2009, and the Pavillon Neuflize OBC at the Palais de Tokyo in 2014-15. She received a Jury prize at the Sharjah Biennial in 2009, the Visual Arts Grant from the Fundación Botín in 2010, Mophradat’s Consortium Commissions in 2018, and is currently a fellow of the Berlin Artistic Research Grant Programme for 2022-2023
Blessed Blessed Oblivion, Jumana Manna, 21 min, Palestine (2010)
Arabic (English subtitles)
BLESSED BLESSED OBLIVION is a portrait of masculine performativity in East Jerusalem, as manifested in gyms, body shops and barber shops. Inspired by Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising (1963), the film uses visual collage and the musical soundtrack as ironic commentary. Anger’s subjects — leather-clad bikers, serve as a counterpoint to the culture Manna attempts to portray, that of male ‘thug’ culture. Simultaneously psychologizing the characters and seduced by them, Manna finds herself in a double bind similar to the conflicted desire that animates her protagonist as he drifts from abject rants to declamations of heroic poetry or unashamed self-praise.
Jumana Manna is a visual artist and filmmaker. Her work explores how power is articulated, focusing on the body, land and materiality in relation to colonial inheritances and histories of place. Through sculpture, filmmaking, and occasional writing, Manna deals with the paradoxes of preservation practices, particularly within the fields of archaeology, agriculture and law. Her practice considers the tension between the modernist traditions of categorisation and conservation and the unruly potential of ruination as an integral part of life and its regeneration. Jumana was raised in Jerusalem and lives in Berlin.
Speakers
Jumana Manna is a visual artist and filmmaker. Her work explores how power is articulated, focusing on the body, land and materiality in relation to colonial inheritances and histories of place. Through sculpture, filmmaking, and occasional writing, Manna deals with the paradoxes of preservation practices, particularly within the fields of archaeology, agriculture and law. Her practice considers the tension between the modernist traditions of categorisation and conservation and the unruly potential of ruination as an integral part of life and its regeneration. Jumana was raised in Jerusalem and lives in Berlin.
Bassem Saad is an artist and writer born in Beirut. Their work explores notions of historical rupture, spontaneity, and surplus, through film, performance, and sculpture, alongside essays and fiction. With an emphasis on past and present forms of struggle, they attempt to place scenes of intersubjective exchange within their world-historical frames.
Bassem’s work has been presented and screened at MoMA, CPH:DOX, Triangle-Asterides, Busan Biennale, and Transmediale. Their most recent film, Congress of Idling Persons, received Special Mention in the New:Vision Award category at CPH:DOX 2022.
Their writing appears in The New Inquiry, Jadaliyya, FailedArchitecture, and The Funambulist. They are currently a fellow at the Berlin Program for Artists.
Shadi Habib Allah’s practice ranges from film, sculpture and drawing to installation. While each projects defines its own terms based on research and physical engagement, a common thread is opening up suggestive modes of navigation across circulation networks of people, technologies, objects, images and economy to examine ideas of use and value and the structures that hold them in place.
Born in Jerusalem, Palestine in 1977, Shadi Habib Allah received a BFA from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in 2003 and an MFA from Columbia University in 2010.
Basma al-Sharif (b. 1983) is a Palestinian artist working in cinema and installation. She developed her practice nomadically between the Middle East, Europe, and North America and is currently based in Berlin. Her practice looks at cyclical political conflicts and confronts the legacy of colonialism through satirical, immersive, and lyrical works.
She received an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2007, was a resident of the Fondazione Antonio Ratti in 2009, and the Pavillon Neuflize OBC at the Palais de Tokyo in 2014-15. She received a Jury prize at the Sharjah Biennial in 2009, the Visual Arts Grant from the Fundación Botín in 2010, Mophradat’s Consortium Commissions in 2018, and is currently a fellow of the Berlin Artistic Research Grant Programme for 2022-2023
Presented by ATHAR أثر , QuARC, Berlin Against Pinkwashing, FACQ Berlin – front of Anti-Colonial Anti-Capitalist Anti-Cistem queers, Palästina Spricht – Palestine Speaks Berlin, The Feminist Block of Palestine Speaks Berlin, Jewish Bund
QUEER CINEMA FOR PALESTINE 