LIVE WEBINAR: Land Acknowledgement and Queer Cinema for Palestine Opening Remarks at 4:00pm. Register in advance
Videos in English or Arabic with English subtitles. Land acknowledgement in Mohawk with English subtitles. Closed captioned for deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences in English.
In this powerful screening and panel, filmmakers Indigenous to Turtle Island and filmmakers from Palestine share how they negotiate complex and intersecting relationships to land, home, queerness, labour, art-making, and representation. This program features a land acknowledgement presented by Layla Black and a panel with filmmakers Qais Assali, Justin Ducharme, Whess Harman, and Rana Nazzal, moderated by Wanda Nanibush.
November 11, 4pm EST
SOMETHING FROM THERE
Rana Nazzal
A short film on the substance of our original lands, reflecting the power of memory and symbol to revive a denied homeland and defy official histories.
A short film on the substance of our original lands. Weaving between the voices of the artist’s parents, the film is personal, yet evokes a shared Palestinian experience. The “something from there” is never named, though it is at the heart of the narrative. Is it a piece of land? The soil? The remains of our ancestors? The distinction between land and body is not made, and rather, Something from there focuses on the power of memory and symbols to revive a denied homeland, defy official histories, and counter the settler colonial impetus to erase any assertion of Indigenous life.
POSITIONS
Justin Ducharme
A simple and naturalistic approach to a day in the life of a two-spirit, male sex worker as he visits his clients.
A simple and naturalistic approach to a day in the life of a two-spirit, male sex worker as he visits his clients. Positions is an unapologetic and realist exploration of sexual desire, the quest for financial stability, and the pursuit of agency over one’s own body.
DAWOUD, YA YONATHAI
Qais Assali
Performative video with an embodiment of Palestinian educator, Khalil Al Sakakini.
Using methods of disidentification, queer embodiment, and queering history through queer temporalities, this performative video is an embodiment of Palestinian educator and Arab nationalist, Khalil Al Sakakini, who kept his diaries since 1907. Am I so desperate, Khalil Al Sakakini, to out your dead body, to drag you out of the closet or the grave? This personal question plagues my research, simulating a desire to read Al Sakakini’s lamentations for his “soulmate”, Dawoud, borrowing poetic biblical language, redubbing and conflating his dear friend “David” as Jonathan, who died during Al Sakakini’s one year trip to Brooklyn through an economic depression.
LAND/TRUST
Whess Harman
Performance piece of a dialogue between an artist away from their home territories and Coast Salish land.
LAND/TRUST is a performance piece between Whess Harman, a member of the Carrier Wit’at nation (federally amalgamated under the Lake Babine Nation by the colonial government), and the ancestral, unceded territory of the Musqueam people. The performance takes place in what is now known as Pacific Spirit Regional Park, a park established in 1989 as a natural forest preserve. Originally envisioned as a performance on the artist’s home territories, the work evolved into a hopeful request for the land to help carry grief across the distance between the home made, and the home that is difficult to return to.