A Screening and Conversation with Basma al-Sharif
Curated by Alia Ayman

Palestinian artist/filmmaker Basma al-Sharif explores cyclical political histories and conflicts. In films and installations that move backward and forward in history, between place and non-place, she confronts the legacy of colonialism through satirical, immersive, and lyrical works. There will be a conversation with curator Alia Ayman and filmmaker Basma al-Sharif via Zoom following the screening of the short films. 

We Began By Measuring Distance (2009) | Basma al-Sharif | 19 mins

Long still frames, text, language, and sound are weaved together to unfold the narrative of an anonymous group who fill their time by measuring distance. Innocent measurements transition into political ones, examining how image and sound communicate his- tory. We Began by Measuring Distance explores an ultimate disenchantment with facts when the visual fails to communicate the tragic.

Home Movies Gaza (2013) | Basma al-Sharif | 24 mins

Home Movies Gaza introduces us to the Gaza Strip as a microcosm for the failure of civilisation. In an attempt to describe the everyday of a place that struggles for the most basic of human rights, this video claims a perspective from within the domestic spaces of a territory that is complicated, derelict, and altogether impossible to separate from its political identity.

O Persecuted (2014) | Basma al-Sharif | 12 mins

O, Persecuted turns the act of restoring Kassem Hawal’s 1974 Palestinian Militant film, Our Small Houses, into a performance possible only through film. One that involves speed, bodies, and the movement of the past into a future that collides ideology with escapism.

The Story of Milk and Honey (2011) | Basma al-Sharif | | 10 mins

A narration by an anonymous man details the failure of attempting to write an apolitical love story in Beirut. These details produce their own story through a delicate weaving of fact and fiction, a tale of defeat transforms into a multi-layered journey exploring how we collect information, perceive facts and recreate history to serve our own desires.

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