PANELISTS
Mohammad Shawky Hassan is a filmmaker and video artist living and working between Cairo and Berlin. His work has been shown at the Berlinale, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), HKW, MUCEM, Sursock Museum and Contemporary Image Collective (CIC) among others.
Marwa Arsanios is an artist, filmmaker and researcher who reconsiders politics of the mid-twentieth century from a contemporary perspective, with a particular focus on gender relations, urbanism and industrialisation. She approaches research collaboratively and seeks to work across disciplines.
Rhea Ramjohn is a writer, educator and creative director from Trinidad & Tobago via Boston and Berlin. As founder of WAiVE and co-founder of Black Brown Berlin, her work centers vernacular expression and social justice, most evident in her poetry film Live Chile commissioned in 2020 by Haus der Kulturen der Welt.
MODERATOR
Jowe Harfouche is the executive director of the Network of Arab Alternative Screens (NAAS), a growing constellation of non-governmental cinema spaces presenting visionary film programs that engage and challenge audiences across the Arab region.
Queering The Conditions of Film Production
CONVERSATION
What constitues queer cinema? Is it simply films that depict homosexual and trans stories, or is it also films whose very existence challenges the norms of cinema and the conditions of its production?
To expand on what Godard was once quoted saying: “The problem is not to make political films, but to make films politically”. The problem is no longer making queer films, but making films queerly. This panel proposes to think queerness in terms that go beyond the identity politics of representation and more in politics that are anticolonial – feminist – anti-racist – ecological – anti-normative – for collectivity – anti-ableist – for the workers movement, etc. all at once.