Events
If you may be interested in future events that further explore personal and family archives, community archives, cataloguing, privacy, digitising and publishing, please complete this form for updates on workshops and film screenings.
Past Events
- read about our first events on The Culturist
Short Film Screenings and Discussion @ 421 Arts Campus, Abu Dhabi
Sunday 27 July 2025
5.00pm - 7.30pm
Collected Histories_Image courtesy of 421 Arts Campus and The Frei
- Short Film Screenings: focussed on archives, memories, and identity:
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Between Delicate and Violent (Åžirin Bahar Demirel, 2023, 15 min)
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My Father (Pegah Ahangarani Farahanilran, 2023, 19 min)
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At Home But Not At Home (Suneil Sanzgiri, 2019, 11 min)
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Rankin Street, 1953 (Naeem Mohaieman, 2013, 8 min)
- Post-screening discussion between Hind Mezaina, Jasmine Soliman with audience participation
Where do we look for ourselves? Where are we represented? The UAE is often subject to descriptors as ‘fast paced’ and ‘transient’, terms that indicate that lives lived here are elusive, not capturable. This event will explore the importance of archival self-representation, the objects we keep and why.
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Workshop with Personal Objects @ 421 Arts Campus, Abu Dhabi
Sunday 27 July 2025
7.30pm - 8.30pm
Collected Histories_Image courtesy of 421 Arts Campus and The Frei
The workshop will focus on personal objects and heirlooms in relation to one-another. How an object may be described differently or take on another meaning when placed alongside others and how ‘collections’ can be built and understood. We will also explore moving from personal frameworks to archival description and what categories our objects may be placed within.
We encourage both first-time attendees to bring objects as well as the return of attendees and their objects from the inaugural workshop. These could be could be family photos, letters, diaries, heirlooms...
This event is open to all (over age 16), and no prior knowledge about archival practice is required.
Saturday 19 July 2025
7.30pm - 9.30pm
Image: Still from Scenes of Extraction (Sanaz Sohrabi, 2023)
Join us for an evening of film, conversation, and community as part of Jameel’s Summer Cinema, in collaboration with The Culturist Film Club. This programme brings together two experimental films that reflect on colonial and corporate archives; how they can both reveal and distort, illuminate and erase.
From Palestine and Iran to questions around land, labour and the camera’s role in extractive economies, these films explore how the visual record is shaped by ideology, and how artists today are re-reading the past to tell new stories.
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The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing (Theo Panagopoulos, 2024, UK, 17 min)
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​Scenes of Extraction (Sanaz Sohrabi, 2023, Canada/Iran, 43 min)
Following the screening, Hind Mezaina will be in conversation with archivist and researcher Jasmine Soliman. Audiences are encouraged to engage in collective viewing, stay for the discussion, and enjoy food and refreshments available throughout the evening.
Screenings are free to attend. Registration is required.
Curated by Hind Mezaina, founder of The Culturist Film Club.
Short Film Screenings and Discussion @ 421 Arts Campus, Abu Dhabi
Sunday 4 May 2025
5.15pm - 7.30pm
- Short Film Screenings: focussed on archives, memories, and identity:
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Don’t Get Too Comfortable, Shaima Al Tamimi, 2021, Yemen, UAE, USA, Netherlands, Qatar, 9 min
Questioning the continuous pattern of movement amongst Yemenis in diaspora, the filmmaker fuses archival photographs and sourced footage, calling attention to the collective feeling of statelessness and sense of being felt by migrants.
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Where Am I From? / Ana min wein?, Nouf Aljowaysir, 2022, USA, Saudi Arabia, 13 min
The filmmaker explores her identity by tracing her childhood and family memories by constructing her genealogical journey using two different voices, her own and an AI ‘narrator’, revealing stereotypes and biases derived from its algorithmic composition.
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Still Processing, Sophy Romvari, 2020, Canada, 17 min
A box of stunning family photos unseen for decades awakens lost memories as they are viewed for the first time on camera.​
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The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing, Theo Panagopoulos, 2024, UK, 17 min
When a filmmaker of Palestinian descent based in Scotland unearths a rarely-seen Scottish film archive of Palestinian wildflowers, he decides to reclaim the footage. The film questions the role of image-making as a tool of both testimony and violence when connected to entanglements between people and the land.
- Post-screening discussion between Hind Mezaina, Jasmine Soliman with audience participation
Workshop with Personal Objects @ 421 Arts Campus, Abu Dhabi
Sunday 4 May 2025
7.30pm - 8.30pm
Where do we look for ourselves? Where are we represented? The UAE is often subject to descriptors as ‘fast paced’ and ‘transient’, terms that indicate that lives lived here are elusive, not capturable. This event will explore the importance of archival self-representation, the objects we keep and why.
A workshop following archive and collections-focussed film screenings. Attendees signing up to stay for the workshop will be required to bring at least one item from their personal archive, it could be family photos, letters, diaries, heirlooms. The workshop will explore the importance of archival self-representation, the objects we keep and why.
This event is open to all (over age 16), and no prior knowledge about archival practice is required.