We are delighted to welcome filmmaker Diaa Lagan to take part in a conversation following the screening of this programme
This aemi-curated programme of Palestinian cinema will screen directly after ‘Telltale Signs & Murmurations’ on Saturday September 7th, establishing a timely dialogue between Northern Ireland and the current occupation of Palestine. This programme also reflects aemi’s ongoing solidarity with Palestine and its people.
Film information
Diaa Lagan, Mohhand El-Masri and Fuad Halwani, Gaza.mp4, 2024, 18 mins
Razan AlSalah, Your father was born 100 years old, and so was the Nakba, 2018, 7 mins
أبوكي خلق عمره ١٠٠ سنة، زي النكبة
Rosalind Nashashibi, Al Bareed, District of the Post Office, 2002, 7 mins
Diaa Lagan, Mohhand El-Masri and Fuad Halwani, Gaza.mp4, 2024, 18 mins
“GAZA.MP4” is a meditation on the mundanity of hope in the aftermath of the war on Gaza post-7th October 2023. The video portrays scenes of daily life in Gaza through the lens of a disrupted communication between two friends, Diaa and Mohannad. Diaa requests filmmaker Mohannad to use his phone to capture raw visual materials during his displacement journey from Gaza, Khan Yunis, and Rafah since October. Mohammad’s compliance cements a bond forged during their student days and addresses the phenomenon of data clouding and transferring through alternative channels like Telegram. Using the chat window as a visual element to evoke a sense of our modern anxiety and the relentless pace induced by ADHD, the footage is received and processed by Diaa.
Diaa Lagan is an artist based in Dublin, known for working across a diverse range of mediums, including painting, print, video, and sculpture. His artistic practice draws inspiration from different metaphorical narratives rooted in mythology and history. Alongside these traditional themes, Lagan also engages with contemporary socio-political issues, making his work relevant and thought-provoking in today’s global context. Lagan’s practice is deeply attuned to the present moment, reflecting the ongoing upheaval of social and cultural norms and the resulting unrest on a global scale.
Throughout his career, Lagan has held both solo and group exhibitions, showcasing his work in Ireland and internationally. Notable exhibitions include the “Expanded Memories” exhibition in Antwerp in 2023, “Shahid شَـاهِد” at The LAB Gallery in 2023, “Uprooted Visions” at Edinburgh Printmakers in 2023, and “Point of Perspective” at Artlink Gallery, Donegal in 2022. His work was also featured in “Dialectic Visions” at The Horse Gallery in 2022. This year he has been awarded a studio residency in incubation space, and 1-year residency in Firestation art studios.
Razan Al Salah, Your father was born 100 years old, and so was the Nakba, 2018, 7 mins
A Palestinian grandmother returns to her hometown Haifa through Google Streetview, today, the only way she can see Palestine.
A ghostly voice echoes: the disembodied, imaginary voice of the filmmaker’s grandmother, a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon who was never able to return to her hometown. Her words haunt Google Street View images of Haifa, the only means she could have had of visiting her lost home. But 50 years after the “great catastrophe,” the streets are no longer recognizable. The old woman’s soul wanders in vain through cyberspace in search of her house, probably demolished after the Nakba, and for her son Ameen, imagined as a little boy from another time. Over the images, which distort and pixilate as the network connection cuts in and out, are superimposed images of the trauma of forced relocation. Razan AlSalah pays heartbreaking tribute to the first generation of refugees. (Charlotte Selb, RIDM)
Razan AlSalah is a Palestinian artist and teacher based in Tio’tia:ke/Montreal, 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, Blackstar, RIDM, HotDocs, Yebisu, Melbourne, Glasgow and Beirut International, Sharjah Film Forum and Sursock Museum. Razan teaches film and media arts at the Communication Studies department at Concordia University.
Rosalind Nashashibi, Al Bareed, District of the Post Office, 2002, 7 mins
One slow, hot afternoon in a neighbourhood built to be a utopian suburb for employees of the Palestinian Post Office; now becomes a lawless no-man’s-land between occupied East Jerusalem and Ramallah.
British Palestinian artist Rosalind Nashashibi is a painter and filmmaker. She is preoccupied with looking, in a way that almost crosses over into the subject’s camp, passing onto the side of the observed in a way that can be disconcerting. Her films chronicle intimate moments of contemporary life across diverse circumstances with a deeply empathetic and personal approach. Her films are often non-linear, punctuated by manifestations of power dynamics and collective histories. Subjects have included non-nuclear family structures, the multiple personae of the artist and chronicling Palestinian life.
This event is screening as part of aemi’s DISSOLUTIONS Festival at The Complex Dublin. Tickets are available for individual days Friday or Saturday (15 euro per day) or for the full weekend (25 euro).
Rosalind Nashashibi is a London-based filmmaker and painter. Her films describe the qualities of experience, things and locations. Some questions asked: how do we work? How do we take care of one another? How can we navigate our own institutions? Recent locations include two artists living in exile in Guatemala and a deliveryman in Antwerp. Nashashibi’s paintings find abstract forms for qualities between and around us, in language substitutions. Solo shows include a war artist commission at Imperial War Museum, UCI California, Objectif , Antwerp, ICA, London and Chisenhale. She has shown in Manifesta 7, the Nordic Triennial and Sharjah 10. She represented Scotland in the 52nd Venice Biennale. She is a recipient of the Paul Hamlyn Award for artists, and in 2003 was the first woman to win Becks Futures. In 2017 she participated in documenta14 in Athens and Kassel and she has been nominated for the Turner Prize. Alongside her solo practice she is one half of the collaboration Nashashibi/Skaer with artist Lucy Skaer.
DISSOLUTIONS is proudly supported by Screen Ireland and The Arts Council.
