Collected Histories: Personal Archives and DocumentationFilm Screening | Talk |Workshop
Collected Histories: Personal Archives and Documentation, is a project co-founded by Hind Mezaina and Jasmine Soliman, archivist and founder of RepCinema. Through public film screenings, talks and workshops, its aim is to foster discussion on personal documentation and archiving, with an ultimate goal of inspiring and supporting individuals to become ‘citizen archivists’ by cataloguing, and exploring ways to self-publish and preserve personal collections, and to have discussions about the complexities of communities and belonging.
Collected Histories: Personal Archives and Documentation
Film Screening | Talk |Workshop
Sunday, May 4 at 421 Arts Campus, Abu Dhabi
Film Screening:
Four short films about archives, memories, and identity followed by a short discussion between Hind Mezaina, Jasmine Soliman with audience participation.
Don’t Get Too Comfortable (Shaima Al Tamimi, 2021, 9 min)
Where Am I From? (Nouf Aljowaysir, 2022, 13 min)
Still Processing (Sophy Romvari, 2020, 17 min)
The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing (Theo Panagopoulos, 2024, 17 min)
Workshop:
Attendees signing up to stay for the workshop will be required to bring at least one item from their personal archive, it could be family photos, letters, diaries, heirlooms.
Highlights and photos from the event on May 4
Don't Get Too Comfortable (Shaima Al Tamimi, 2021, 9 min) -- Questioning the continuous pattern of movement amongst Yemenis in diaspora, the filmmaker fuses archival photographs and sourced footage, calling attention to the collective feeling of statelessness and sense of being felt by migrants.
Where Am I From? (Nouf Aljowaysir, 2022, 13 min) -- The filmmaker explores her identity by tracing her childhood and family memories by constructing her genealogical journey using two different voices, her own and an AI ‘narrator’, revealing stereotypes and biases derived from its algorithmic composition.
Still Processing (Sophy Romvari, 2020, 17 min) -- A box of stunning family photos unseen for decades awakens lost memories as they are viewed for the first time on camera.
The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing (Theo Panagopoulos, 2024, 17 min) -- When a filmmaker of Palestinian descent based in Scotland unearths a rarely-seen Scottish film archive of Palestinian wildflowers, he decides to reclaim the footage. The film questions the role of image-making as a tool of both testimony and violence when connected to entanglements between people and the land.