London, Ontario

Monday, November 11, 2021 | 4pm EST

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.

Films

POSITIONS

Justin Ducharme

12 min | Unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples | 2019

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

6 min | United States | 2020

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

17 min | Unceded xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam) territory | 2021

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.

min

2021