12 October

Opening Night And Still it Remains screening

Opening Night And Still it Remains screening,+ Life in the Orchids Listening Session

ViaVia Restaurant

Registration Essential

We open the festival with a beautiful, meditative and yet haunting work directed by Arwa Aburawa and Turab Shah. And Still it Remains traces the legacies of toxic colonialism in the South of Algeria, a landscape that was abused by the French in the 1960’s as a testing ground for nuclear detonations. The work unarchives the memory of this period through listening to the communities and the environments who are the living testament of this invisibilized history. Through the film we confront the reality that time truly is a colonial construct, a fallacy that is exposed through the environment’s own poetic justice (the filmmakers were compelled to explore this colonial legacy after hearing of reports in 2021 that radioactive dust caused by French nuclear bombs in the 1960s was travelling in the Saharan winds that regularly visit European mainland). The work raises questions of decolonisation whilst its methodology mirrors a commitment to the practice of decolonising how image, sound and storytelling can also bring justice when resurfacing these cruel histories. “And still, it remains offers a captivating and compelling picture of a community shaped but not circumscribed by its history”.

As genocidal logic continues its expansion in Palestine and the Levant, backed by global north weapons supply, funding and moral support, we find this work to be a pertinent and necessary reminder of the ways in which colonialism persists in destroying our environments and indigenous life. This work also reminds us that the land and people do not forget, a fact which can allow us to hold radical optimism for the incoming future.

After a break from the screening and a sharing of food and drinks we will come back together for an active listening session with Life in the Orchards, an audio-visual work produced by Faycal Lahrouchi & Kevin Le Dortz for Global Diversity Foundation. Life in the Orchards spends time in the Al Haouz region, listening to the testimonies of a community processing the catastrophe of the 2023 earthquake that struck Marrakech, leaving an already marginal region in a place of extreme vulnerability.

In addition to Life in the Orchards being a poignant testimony of the earthquake-affected communities’ on-going sufferance and enduring marginalisation, the piece captures people’s attachment to their ancestral lands, despite having lost everything they hold dear in it (homes, cattle, crops, loved ones), portraying that intimate, complex and ineffable relationship between humans and their landscapes.

In connecting the landscapes, language, and history of Southern Algeria to our own here in Marrakech we found lines of connection between the two environmental catastrophes, as well as in the resilience, steadfastness and refusal apparent in both communities.

 

Arwa Aburawa and Turab Shah are a directing duo dedicated to exploring race, migration, the environment and other ongoing legacies of colonialism through film. Together they also co-founded Other Cinemas, a project dedicated to supporting Black and non-white communities in London through free film screenings and a free, year-long film school.

Fayçal Lahrouchi is a Moroccan sound artist, cultural operator and Global Diverstiy Foundation’s Communications Officer and Podcast Lead. Fayçal has a strong interest in audio-documentary podcasts as a powerful tool for telling stories. He has taken part in various residencies and workshop programs revolving around sound practice. Fayçal is the co-founder of the Moroccan Electronic Music Association (AMME), an NGO dedicated to the promotion of Moroccan electronic music, through creative projects that tackle Amazigh identity in the region, traditional musical heritage, transmission and collective memory. 

Kevin Le Dortz is a French filmmaker whose creative practice weaves through the cultural landscapes of both Morocco and France, where he is rooted. His debut short film, L’Envol, shot in the regions of Chefchaouen and Tangier, reimagines gender roles through the lens of a timeless fable. His second short, SCRED TBM, shifts to France, where it delves into the modern-day reality of addiction to mobile applications.

For the past three years, Kevin has served as a visual storyteller for the Electronic-Amazigh musical project Tekchbila, crafting immersive visual narratives that amplify and harmonize with the musicians’ performances, creating a dialogue between sound and image.

17 October
7 pm – 9.30 pm