>> Workshop with Mohanad Yaqubi: Curating Palestinian Cinema
16-17 Oct, 10am-2pm (free entrance with pre-registration)
Casa do Comum
>> Talk with Mohanad Yaqubi and Susana de Sousa Dias:
Listening to the Archive — Voices of Resistance
Moderators: Avital Barak, Stefanie Baumann
16 Oct., 6-8pm (free entrance)
Casa do Comum
We are excited to announce the first public intervention in dialogue with the Doc’s Kingdom Archive: Listening to the Archive — Voices of Resistance, organised in collaboration with the working group “Thinking Documentary Film”. Composed of a two-day workshop with the filmmaker Mohanad Yaqubi, and a public talk with Mohanad Yaqubi and Portuguese filmmaker Susana de Sousa Dias, this encounter asks to mark some of the trajectories that connect past political struggles with the present bleeding reality – from the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution to the ongoing struggle for Palestinian liberation. Through sounds and images from militant and political archives, we invite the audience to a multi-sensorial intervention.
About the programme:
>> Workshop with Mohanad Yaqubi: Curating Palestinian Cinema
Tracing the disappearance of Palestinian narratives through out the 20th century film production, reveals a systematic blindness to the existence of the Palestinian communities and its culture, paving the way to the colonisation of their lands, legitimised the destruction of their livelihood, and when they started to revolt and struggle, they faced a designed silencing through preventing their voices of reaching to mainstream audiences. This workshop investigates the history of image production around Palestine, to understand and position Palestinian cinema in the context of struggle against disappearance, at the same time, championing Palestinian filmmakers who have been experimenting resistance through forms, structures and aesthetics, breaking the barrier, brick by brick, through their films for the past 76 years, as a way of struggle, a cinematic one.
Registration: If you wish to participate in the two-day workshop please write to phildoc@fcsh.unl.pt (registration is mandatory, as places are limited).
>> Talk with Mohanad Yaqubi and Susana de Sousa Dias:
Listening to the Archive — Voices of Resistance
Moderated by Avital Barak and Stefanie Baumann, this encounter invites filmmakers Mohanad Yaqubi and Susana de Sousa Dias to reflect on their past debates in Doc’s Kingdom – International Seminar on Documentary Film, and relate them to their current projects. In the talk, we will share a short compilation composed of excerpts from the relevant debates of 2010 and 2019 seminars, and images and sounds from current projects.
[ This event is organised by Doc’s Kingdom and the working group “Thinking Documentary Film”, and supported by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e para a Tecnologia, Portuguese Ministry of Education and Science, under the project UIDB/00183/2020. ]
—
Mohanad Yaqubi is a filmmaker, producer, and one of the founders of the Ramallah-based production house, Idioms Film. Yaqubi is also one of the founders of the research and curatorial collective Subversive Films that focuses on militant film practices, and recently is a resident researcher at KASK, School of the Arts – Gent, Belgium. Yaqubi’s filmography as a producer includes the documentary feature Infiltrators (dir. Khaled Jarrar, 2013), Suspended Time (Several directors, 2013) the narrative short Pink Bullet (dir. Ramzi Hazboun, 2014), he co-produced several films including the narrative feature Habibi (dir. Susan Youssef, 2010), the short narrative Though I Know the River is Dry (dir. Omar R. Hamilton, 2012), and the feature documentaries Ambulance (dir. Mohammed Jabaly, 2016) and Ouroboros ( dir. Basma Sharif, 2017), Ibrahim: A Fate to Define (dir: Lina Alabed, 2019) and As I Want (dir. Samaher Al Qadi, 2021). Yaqubi’s first feature film Off Frame AKA Revolution Until Victory, 2016 made its premieres at TIFF, Berlinale, Cinéma du Réel, Dubai IFF, and Yamagata among 50 other screenings around the world. His second feature film R21 AKA Restoring Solidarity, 2022, has made its premiere at documenta15, IDFA, Marrakesh, True/False and Cinéma du Réel, and is still touring around the world.
Susana de Sousa Dias is a filmmaker and artist from Portugal. Her films and installations explore the dialectics of history and memory, questioning established regimes of visibility with a focus on the archive. Using still photographs and archival imagery, her first works (2000-2017) deal with the memory of the dictatorship in Portugal. Through testimonies from political prisoners, and resulting from extensive research in the national archives, her work played an important role in the public denunciation of the violent repression and torture used by the regime. More recently, she directed Fordlandia Malaise, in 2019, and co-directed Viagem ao Sol, with Ansgar Schaefer, in 2021. She often collaborates with her brother António de Sousa Dias, composer and artist, in the creation of the soundtrack for her films. Her work has received numerous awards and has been presented worldwide. In 2012, she created a female collective that directed Doclisboa for two editions, establishing new sections such as Cinema of Urgency and Passages (Documentary & Contemporary Art). She is a co-founder of the production company Kintop. She holds a PhD in Fine Arts-Video, and teaches at the Fine Arts Faculty of the University of Lisbon.