Make History: Filed and Concealed features five short films by artists and filmmakers about the control and (in)visibility of archives and libraries. 
This screening was one of the public components of Night School 2023: Make History, a four-week seminar led by Todd Reisz titled Make History.

https://jameelartscentre.org/whats-on/night-school-2023-make-history/

https://jameelartscentre.org/whats-on/film-programme-make-history-filed-and-concealed/




Film program, followed by a discussion between Hind Mezaina and Todd Reisz, with audience participation:

Memorial for the Lost Pages (Madiha Aijaz, Pakistan, 2018, 3 min)
A brief, acute observation of changing times in Pakistani society using the former Theosophical Society Library in Karachi.

These Silences Are All the Words (Madiha Aijaz, Pakistan, 2018, 15 min)
An observational documentary on public libraries provides an entry point into present-day Karachi, where irredeemable changes feel imminent. While the libraries become a bastion for the literary tradition of Urdu, their frequent visitors lament the increasing dominance of English – a residual reminder of colonialism, partition and the ‘globalising’ present.

Wrapped in quiet solitude, seated readers are shown hiding away from the hustle and bustle of urban life that can be seen outside.

How to Reverse a Spell: The Promise of an Archive (Yasmine Benabdallah, Morocco, 2022, 10 min)
The film forms a speculative triptych traversing the disappearance of the Moroccan public archives, the colonial displacement of videos and, finally, a prayer for an apocalyptic solar flare that can return things to how they never were.

A History of the World According to Getty Images (Richard Misek, Norway/UK, 2022, 19 min)
A montage of some of the last century’s most iconic images forms the basis of an investigation into the power that commercial image archives hold over our shared cultural memory, and an attempt to reclaim a few fragments of their collections from corporate control.

Time Capsule (Jan Ijäs, Finland, 2016, 21 min)
“Libraries are still the best way to preserve the important aspects of man’s written inheritance for the future, not DVDs, hard disks, chips or the internet.”

Belgian artist Louis de Cordier bought a piece of land at 2,000 meters in the Spanish Sierra Nevada and built an underground library and a seed bank for non-genetically modified plants.

The books on art, science and spirituality that he aims to preserve for the next 2,000 years are his own selection, but anyone can send him books.

Date: January 14, 2023
Venue: Lobby, Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai

Jameel Arts Centre

Press: Alserkal.online