We don't want this song to end

Kamal Aljafari, Mona Benyamin, Razan Al Salah, Dina Mimi, Noor Abed

Past event

Price: $12*
Genre: Film/Video
Season: Fall 2022
date: OCT 3
TIME: MON, 8:30 PM
STREAM: MON, 8:30 PM (PT)
RUNTIME: Approx. 85 minutes
Program: Download Program Notes (PDF)

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About

What is more unsettling to an occupier than an occupied people’s relentless imagining of potential futures? Among the violence that manifests itself in events documented, circulated, and reiterated by the media, there is another form of aggression in Palestine that lies outside time, in nonevents designed to fester angst, powerlessness, and eventually invisibility. At the intersection of the tragic and absurd, laughter becomes an empowering collective sigh of relief. The subversive acts featured in this shorts program by Kamal Aljafari, Mona Benyamin, Razan Al Salah, Dina Mimi and Noor Abed consider the power of humor, performance, imagination and ultimately hope in the strive for liberation.

Curated by Zaina Bseiso.

The Jack H. Skirball Series is organized by Bérénice Reynaud and Eduardo Thomas.

about the artists

Kamal Aljafari

Kamal Aljafari is a Palestinian filmmaker. He attended the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne and now lives in Berlin, Germany. He has taught filmmaking at The New School in New York and the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie, Berlin. He was also a Film Study Center Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University. In 2021 Olhar de Cinema – Curitiba International Film Festival in Brazil devoted its Focus Section to his work. His most recent work, Paradiso, XXXI, 108, was premiered at Corti d’Autore, at the Locarno Film Festival 2022. He is currently completing A Fidai Film, and preparing a fiction film to be shot in Jaffa.

Mona Benyamin

Mona Benyamin (b.1997) is a Palestinian visual artist and filmmaker based in Haifa. In her works, she explores intergenerational outlooks on hope, trauma, and questions of identity. Her recent video works have been screened—among others—at MoMA, Another Gaze, Sheffield DocFest, and Columbia University.

Razan AlSalah

Based in Tio’tia:ke/Montreal, Razan AlSalah is a Palestinian artist and teacher investigating the material aesthetics of dis/appearance of places and people in colonial image worlds. Her work has shown at community-based and international film festivals & galleries including Art of the Real, Prismatic Ground, RIDM, HotDocs, Yebisu, Melbourne, Glasgow and Beirut International, Sharjah Film Forum, IZK Institute for Contemporary Art and Sursock Museum. AlSalah co-directs the Feminist Media Studio with Krista Lynes and teaches film and media arts at the Communication Studies department at Concordia University.

Dina Mimi

Dina Mimi (born 1994, Palestine), is an artist who lives and works between Jerusalem and Amsterdam. Her practice encompassses video, sound, performance, and text, and examines the body/space in Palestine. Her current research is concerned with death in the public sphere, as well as notions of visibility and invisibility between archaeology and the object, and the museum and death. Dina obtained her Bachelor’s degree from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem in 2016, and her MFA degree in Art in the Public Sphere from ECAV-École Cantonale d’Art du Valais in Switzerland in 2018. She is currently a resident of Des Ateliers in Amsterdam.

Noor Abed

Noor Abed (b. 1988 Jerusalem) works at the intersection of performance, media and film. Through a process of image making, her works create situations where social possibilities are both rehearsed and performed. Abed attended the Whitney Independent Study Program in Νew York in 2015-16, and the Home Workspace Program (HWP) at Ashkal Alwan, Beirut 2016-17. She received her BA from the International Academy of Arts in Palestine and a MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles.

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