Overview

Sharjah Art Foundation presents a series of online film screenings jointly organised with curator Anna Goetz, who initiated this collaborative project featuring 21 artists and collectives from the Middle East and Latin America working in film and video.

Genealogies in the Middle East and Latin America focuses on artists from these two regions of the Global South, which share not only a history of colonisation but also of oppressive political regimes. Moreover, the two regions are closely linked to one another through several cycles of immigration over the last 150 years from nations such as today's Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan and Iraq to countries in Central America, Peru, Chile, Mexico as well as Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, and Venezuela. The impact of this shared history on their respective cultures, although the circumstances varied historically and regionally, is reflected in the transnational territorial subjectivities of many of the participating artists and their work.

The screening project explores historical and contemporary relationships between artists in the Middle East and Latin America. It unfolds along narratives revealed by the artists' personal accounts, which provide critical alternative perspectives and insights by decentralising dominant narratives, schools and paradigms produced and affirmed in the West. The curatorial premise of the transnational screening project is based on the playful format of a chain letter. The programme's threads are spun by the artists—each artist proposed the work of another artist to be shown after the screening of their own film. Many of the artists chose to nominate works by artists who were influential early in their careers, whether for formal considerations or for reasons that reveal their working and living conditions that resulted in limited access to film and video from outside their immediate environment.

Over 21 days, the online screening programme Genealogies in the Middle East and Latin America will release 21 short and feature-length experimental and documentary videos. Each moving-image work will be available for 21 days.

Screening Information

The films will be screened on the Foundation’s virtual film platform. One film will be released daily throughout the project period, from 1 to 21 June, and each film will be available to watch for 21 days from its scheduled release date. The programme ends on 11 July. To receive daily updates about the screenings, including detailed information about the films and access links, register now here.