Join us for an evening of discussion and film. We’ll be screening Spaces of Exception, a documentary film that explores and contrasts life in American Indian reservations and in Palestinian refugee camps, in a series of intimate portraits of people living with and against an environment that deprives them of a sense of their own past and future.
The film visits reservations in Arizona, New Mexico, New York, and South Dakota, as well camps in Lebanon and the West Bank, “places defined by their historical and spiritual resistance” in order to “understand the conditions for life, community, and sovereignty.” While the histories are distinct, dispossession and loss unite these communities in solidarity, and the alternating stories highlight both their unique tragedies and their revolutionary commonalities. Mostly eschewing archival footage, Spaces of Exception showcases the present, in which each day lived is itself an act of resistance.
Arrive early for a Q&A with the co-director of the film Malek Rasamny, in conversation with activist filmmaker and genocide studies scholar Mario Hamad.
Speakers:
Malek Rasamny is a writer, researcher and filmmaker. He is the co-founder of the documentary research project The Native and the Refugee, co-director of the film “Spaces of Exception” and co-editor of the book The Mohawk Warrior Society: A Handbook on Sovereignty and Survival. He is doctoral candidate at Paris University Nanterre, where he is affiliated to the Laboratory of Ethnology and Comparative Sociology, researching the links between the Lebanese Civil War and phenomenon of reincarnation within the Druze community. His writings have been featured in diverse publications such as Newlines, eflux, the New Inquiry and Le Monde.
Mario Hamad is an activist filmmaker and genocide studies scholar engaged in a Militant and Expanded film practice. He is a Visiting Practitioner at University of the Arts London, where he teaches both experimental and activist audio-visual production, and the study of film and screen cultures. He also leads the Militant Cinema and Activist Film course at the Open City Docs School, based at University College London’s department of anthropology; and, he is the founder of Wujoud Collective — a gathering of Syrian and Levantine civil society activists involved in the creation of audio-visual interventions as political action against tyranny.
Admission is free, though a £5 donations is suggested to support programming at Pelican House!
☀️ Arrive from 6pm
📚 Q&A begins 7pm
🎥 Film at 7:30pm
💬 Social from 9pm