Listening to the Archive — Voices of Resistance
On October 16th, at Casa do Comum, there will be a talk with Mohanad Yaqubi and Susana de Sousa Dias on “Listening to the Archive — Voices of Resistance”. The talk will start at 6:00 PM and be moderated by Avital Barak and Stefanie Baumann. Free entry.
This encounter seeks to highlight some of the trajectories that connect past political struggles to the bleeding reality of the present — from the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution to the ongoing struggle for the liberation of Palestine. Through sounds and images from militant and political archives, we invite the audience to a multi-sensory intervention.
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.
This event is organised by the working group “Thinking Documentary Film” (IFILNOVA) in collaboration with Doc’s Kingdom, and supported by the Foundation for Science and Technology (Fundação para a Ciência e para a Tecnologia) of the Portuguese Ministry of Education and Science under the projects UIDB/00183/2020 and UIDP/00183/2020.