𝗹𝗶𝗾𝗮’𝗮 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗵𝗿𝗶 𝟴 |
 

A Thousand Landscapes, A Thousand Bodies

This month's liqa'a shahri is a two-fold film program that explores the tension between the collective and the individual by looking at how landscapes and bodies interact with each other. Conceived as a diptych, these two programs bypass the difference of scale between the body and the landscape to take interest in the trajectories of contamination that puts these two entities in constant relation and negotiation.

Program 2:

It's under the flesh where you are tender

Agnès Hayden
2023, 2’
Silent

About the film:
It is I who drag my fingernail across the flesh, capriciously, seeking to understand what dwells beyond. How many layers until I reach the bone. How much I would have to excavate to turn around and return to the starting point. 

About the filmmaker:
Agnès Hayden (Spain, 2000). Multidisciplinary artist, constantly blending the realms of image and sound. With a background in Direction of Photography and specialized in 16mm analog film. At the core of Agnès' artistic practice lies a profound exploration of the technologization of society and human emotion. The union between the machine, used, essentially, to materialize thoughts, desires and intuitions, in the shape of an œuvre, and the author who endows it with feeling. She try to approach the language of machines through the study of code and programming, inspiring for her artistic decisions. She usually works linking her visual work with the soundscapes that these evoke her, composing the sound of most of her artistic pieces.

for here am i sitting on a tin can far above the world

Gala Hernández López
2024, 19’
English

About the film:
A woman dreams of the American cryptographer Hal Finney. A major economic crisis affects the cryptocurrency market, tens of thousands of people are cryogenized awaiting better times. Are they suspended or falling into the void? What strange relationship do we have with the future?

About the filmmaker:
Gala Hernández López is an artist-researcher and filmmaker. Her work articulates interdisciplinary research with the production of essay films, video installations and performances on the new modes of subjectivation specifically produced by computational digital capitalism. She examines from a feminist and critical lens the discourses and imaginaries circulating in virtual communities as symptomatic fictions of a state of the world. Her work has been shown at Berlinale, DOK Leipzig, Cinéma du Réel, IndieLisboa, Transmediale and the Salon de Montrouge, and she won the 2024 César Award for best short documentary.

La rodilla del diablo (English: The Devil's Knee)

Martin Davalos
2023, 5’
Spanish with English Subtitles

About the film:
The body as an archive, memory as a witness of possible futures, the image as a will. Fragments of 8mm film that disintegrate before a body that seeks to be seen, bodies that sprout incessantly. The Devil's Knee explores the systematic erasure of identities, a trace in the archive to question memory, non-presence.

About the filmmaker:
Independent visual artist, animator and director. Graduated from the Faculty of Interactive Media of the University of Morelia. His work is based on the experimentation of mixed techniques in different supports. from animation to film material. He was a programmer for ANIMAURA International Animation Festival in the 2022 and 2023 editions. In addition to his work as a director, he is an experimental film researcher, in where he is currently working on a thesis about the filmmaker Teo Hernandez. In October 2023 he was part of a dialogue table about the rescue of film archives and private family collections at the Encuentro Latin American Homemade Cinema Amateur and Orphane organized by the festival Ultracinema and Ojo Libre. His short film, The Devil's Knee, was the result of the experimental practice of the Bergman Chair and the UNAM Film Library under the tutelage of the video artist Mexican Ximena Cuevas. His work has been projected in various exhibitions and festivals of a experimental.

Exit Through The Cuckoo's Nest

Nikola Ilic
2024, 19’
Serbian with English Subtitles

About the film:
This personal short documentary tells the story of a soldier who never wanted to be one. His decision never to pull a trigger led to resistance and ultimately to military prison. Pretending to be mentally ill, he leaves the war zone and returns to Belgrade via a mental health care facility on the day NATO begins bombing the entire country.

About the filmmaker:
Originally from Belgrade (Serbia), Nikola Ilic is an independent filmmaker, and cinematographer interested in creative and observational documentary film-making. Since 2007 lives, studies and works between Switzerland and Serbia. His short films have been shown and awarded at many international Festivals around the globe. His most recent feature Doc (Co-Directed with Corina Schwingruber Ilic) won a DOK Leipzig Golden Dove among other awards. Three times nominated for the Swiss Film Award. Two times winner of Zürich Film Award and Film Award of Central Switzerland. Co-founder of Pro Short Association. Member of the Swiss Film Academy and the European Film Academy.

Full Out

Sarah Ballard
2024, 14’
French with English Subtitles

About the film:
In 19th century Paris at the Salpêtrière Hospital, patients were hypnotized on stage to reproduce the symptoms of hysteria for public audiences. Over a century later, high school cheerleaders are fainting en masse.

About the filmmaker:
Sarah Ballard is a filmmaker and educator based in Milwaukee, WI. Her work has screened at festivals such as CROSSROADS, Antimatter, Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, Light Matter Experimental Film and Media Arts Festival, and Engauge Experimental Film Festival, among others. Sarah is a recipient of the 2023 Princess Grace Award in Film and is a Lecturer in the Department of Film, Video, Animation, and New Genres at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.

Dans ma tête (English: In My Head)

Irina Tempea
2024, 6’
French with English Subtitles

About the film:
Dans ma tête is an experimental short film about the disease I've had for just over seven years, multiple sclerosis:
Through my magnetic resonance images, cervical slices and jerky sounds, everyday life unfolds. Life goes on. I'm fine, I'm not so fine.
Today, I'm opening up about this tentacular disease.
This film diary is part mourning, part sweetness.

About the filmmaker:
Irina Tempea is a filmmaker and cultural worker of Romanian origin based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. Her diary-like artistic practice revolves around the analog process she uses to reveal herself. She questions the materiality of film while filming her daily life and those close to her. She has just completed her first short film, IN MY HEAD, about her multiple sclerosis. She is currently working on her second film.

Curated by Mira Adoumier & Nour Ouayda (The Camelia Committee).

The Camelia Committee developed and presented this program as part of the Images Festival 2025 Curatorial Residency.

liqa’a shahri is our monthly gathering every last Thursday of the month in the Shared Auditorium at AIF. Each month, we gather for a screening, a performance, a workshop, a talk, or a panel—an open space to think together about our research, artistic and preservation practices. Come be part of the conversation.

𝗹𝗶𝗾𝗮’𝗮 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗵𝗿𝗶 𝟴 | 

A Thousand Landscapes, A Thousand Bodies

This month's liqa'a shahri is a two-fold film program that explores the tension between the collective and the individual by looking at how landscapes and bodies interact with each other. Conceived as a diptych, these two programs bypass the difference of scale between the body and the landscape to take interest in the trajectories of contamination that puts these two entities in constant relation and negotiation.

Program 1:

Avant seriana (English: Before Seriana)

Samy Benammar
2024, 19’
English / French / Arabic

About the film:
Mom, you brought me back to our homeland. All I know about these harsh landscapes I learned from books written by the hand that burned these mountains. I try to undo the colonial myths engraved into my memory, but the hills escape my gaze. Do you think I, too, have become the white djinn spoken of by the legends surrounding our martyrs?

About the filmmaker:
Filmmaker, photographer and critic, Samy Benammar holds a master's degree in film studies from the Université de Montréal. His Algerian and working-class origins are central to his experimental work, which questions the socio-political stakes of archival and current images. His practice is as much interested in film (super 8, 16mm or 35mm), digital and analog media. This hybridization tends to question the interactions between technicality and politics of images.

Bloom

Helena Girón and Samuel M. Delgado
2023, 18’
Spanish with English Subtitles

About the film:
The mythical Isla de San Borondón (St. Brendan’s Isle) appears and disappears. Throughout history it has been placed near the Canary Islands on maps. The legend of the island of San Borondón became so pervasive that expeditions were organized to discover and conquer it for three hundred years. After centuries of oblivion, it has finally been found.

Le disque de poussière (English: The Dust Disk)

Charline Dally
2023, 18’
French with English Subtitles

About the film:
Le disque de poussière invites us to probe tiny meteorite particles, the terrain of an intriguing investigation into the origin of stars. Their irregular morphology reveals a mineral writing that researchers attempt to decipher, until it mysteriously seems to come to life.

About the filmmaker:
Charline dally (she/they) lives between France and Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal. Her practice combines analog video signals, computer generated imagery, glass and textile through films, installations, and performances. Graduated from Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains and UQAM in visual arts, she has realized artistic residencies at Signal Culture (Owego, NY) and the Society for Technological Arts (Montreal). Her work has been presented in various institutions and festivals such as MOCA (Toronto), MAJ (Joliette, QC), FIFA (Montreal), Ann Arbor Film Festival (Ann Arbor, MI), FNC (Montreal), VIFF (Vancouver), CTM Festival (Berlin), MUTEK (CA, ES, AR), BISFF (Beijing), OMAF (Seoul), Les Abattoirs (Toulouse).

Radius Catastrophe

Jad Youssef
2025, 40’
English and Arabic

This program is curated by Mira Adoumier & Nour Ouayda (The Camelia Committee).

The Camelia Committee developed and presented this program as part of the Images Festival 2025 Curatorial Residency.

liqa’a shahri is our monthly gathering every last Thursday of the month in the Shared Auditorium at AIF. Each month, we gather for a screening, a performance, a workshop, a talk, or a panel—an open space to think together about our research, artistic and preservation practices. Come be part of the conversation.