Film Screening by the WANAWAL, MayDay Rooms and iniva Êvar Hussayni

Book tickets

The West Asian and North African Women’s Art Library presents a film screening and talk in collaboration with the project “Uncovering the Archive” by iniva and Mayday Rooms!

On the 27th July at 7pm, we will be hosting a screening of 3 films by artists and researchers from the West Asian and North African (WANA) region, a talk between Kaitlene Koranteng, Lamya Sadiq and Êvar Hussayni as well as a display of archival material from all three libraries that visitors can interact with, all in relation to resistance movements and art practices originating from WANA.

The films span from 2000 to 2023 and will take viewers through a journey of observation around the way political, historical and personal experiences can be portrayed and characterised through experimental filmmaking and video art, and how this contributes to forms of memory making and knowledge production. The talk will use this as a point of departure to discuss how archives influence filmmaking practices and whether film itself can be considered an alternative form of archiving.

There will also be discourse around what archives are and who is usually found within them. We will be asking questions such as: Can alternative forms of archiving, specifically via film, unfold and encourage a re-imagination or a re-memory? And how can archives/libraries and practitioners create new modes of respect and care in the circulation of documentation and political, historical and personal information?

The event is open to everyone but we highly encourage anyone under 25 to come!

We look forward to having you watch some gorgeous films, engage with incredible archival material and eat some delish popcorn <3

About Facilitators and Libraries

Êvar Hussayni is an artist whose work focuses on Kurdish genealogies, colonial violence in archives and their relationship with the trajectory of Kurdish feminism and Kurdish womanhood. She also runs The West Asian and North African Women’s Art Library, a publicly accessible archive built to collect and exhibit artwork, curatorial projects, and publications by practitioners from West Asia and North Africa. Its purpose is to develop and experiment with different archiving methods, and research how geopolitical identities intersect and function within the current collective conception of documentation.

Lamya Sadiq is a researcher and youth worker from Dhaka, Bangladesh. She is also the public engagement co-ordinator at MayDay Rooms. MayDay Rooms is an archive, resource space and safe haven for social movements, experimental and marginal cultures and their histories. Our building in the centre of London contains an archive of historical material linked to social struggles, resistance campaigns, experimental culture, and the expression of marginalised and oppressed groups.

Kaitlene Koranteng is an archivist and poet with an interest in exploring hidden and marginalised histories and access to archives. Since 2022, Koranteng works with iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts), the visual arts organisation committed to disseminating radical and emergent contemporary art practice from the Global Majority, African, Asian and Caribbean perspectives.

About Reference Point

Reference Point is a multifunctional Library, Bookshop, and bar with the aim to democratise rare visual literature, and provide a community space for creatives in London.

Resources

Music

• WANAWL Screening Playlist

Films

• Have You Ever Killed A Bear? Or Becoming Jamila, Marwa Arsanios (2014): https://vimeo.com/575785093
• Silent Sight, Zineb Sedira (2000):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G2FP9rWE5Q
• gangsters and gods do not speak, they nod, Rojda Yavuz (2023)

WANAWAL Collection

• Essential Poems and Writings of Joyce Mansour
  Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El-Sadaawi
• Eight Thousand Civilian Kurds have disappeared in Iraq, what happened to them? Report by A Preparatory Committee, November 1987
• Gender & Tribe; Women, Land and Forests by Govind Kelkar and Dev Nathan
• Free Leyla Zana! Edited by American Kurdish Information Network and Human Rights Alliance, 1997
• Gurbetelli Ersöz’s Defence; An Impassioned plea for free speech in Turkey by Friends of Özgür Gündem & Action for Kurdish Women
• Voices of Resistance – Oral Histories of Moroccan Women By Alison Baker

MayDay Rooms Collections
Anti-Apartheid, Decolonisation, National Liberation Struggles, Peace Movements collections:

• Jubilee 2000 Afrika Campaign
• Dissenting Ephemera – Housmans
• Intifada 1992 – Ed Emery
• Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa