Salasil Film Club

Join us for a quarterly film club by salasil that brings together screenings and informal, open dialogue anchored in the shared aim of supporting independent artist films that thoughtfully respond to the social, political, and cultural landscape of our world.

Through a curated programme of experimental films, each edition of the club spotlights works that reflect the evolution of film-based practices, and the use of moving images as a tool for documentation, archiving, and cultural commentary.

This edition includes films by the following artists:

- Ruba Al-Sweel
- Hala AlSalman
- Moza Al Mazrouei
- Yara Asmar

Venue: Common Room, WH51, Alserkal Avenue (pin)
Time: 5PM - 7PM
Date: Sunday, 3 November 2024

Click here to RSVP.

Studio salasil is a future-focusing curatorial studio tending to care, research and experimentation. Through these principles, they develop exhibitions, publications, programs, mentorship and artwork that imagine narratives, senses and experiences. They invite collaboration and conversation as they explore the multidisciplinary nature of creative work to reveal the infinite possibilities of exhibition-making and artwork creation. Highlighting the relationship between curators, artists and the audience, their aim is to encourage risk, disruption and imagination.

Ruba Al-Sweel's practice is rooted in writing and research focused on media theory and networked communications. She produces text-based video works that reference pop culture. Layering written and visual symbols, she parodies mass media by exaggerating certain aspects of contemporary society. She has published in magazines and books, and is the co-editor and founder of POSTPOSTPOST, a biannual publication of arts, culture and design billed as an ‘anti-manifesto’. Her work has appeared in the Brooklyn Rail, Art Asia Pacific, DoNotResearch, DAZED, DAMN Magazine, among others. She has curated exhibitions in Dubai, Berlin, Paris, Jeddah and online. She holds a master’s degree in media and creative industries from SciencesPo, Paris.

Hala Al Salman is an Iraqi-Canadian multidisciplinary artist with a strong background in journalism and documentary filmmaking. After 10 years of covering bad news, she pivoted towards fiction and visual art. Her practice is grounded in questioning gender relations, political power and history-making through collage, cinema and ceramics. As an MFA candidate at OCAD U, her thesis exhibit proposed dreaming as an archeological methodology for excavating possible futures in Iraq. Hala wrote and directed the short film "Bêtes Humaines", which was funded by TV5 Quebec in 2011 and officially selected for screening at the Newport Beach International Film Festival and Montreal's Rendez-Vous du Cinéma Québecois. In 2017, she co-wrote and co-produced the Iraqi feature film "Haifa Street" with Baghdad-based director Mohanad Hayal, which won awards at the Doha Film Institute, Cairo Film Festival, Busan Film Festival and Carthage Film Festival among others.

Moza Almazrouei (b.2000, Dubai, UAE) uses sculpture, film, and writing as a vehicle to explore material and mineral politics embedded within urban spaces. The basis of her practice is prompted by writings of feminist geographers like Deborah Dixon and writers like Gabrielle Hechte, who use the scale of the mineral as a window to read broader regional geopolitics. Moza Almazrouei completed her BA at the Slade School of Fine Arts in 2022 and MA in Research Architecture at Goldsmiths University in 2023. Moza received the Graham Robertson prize in 2022 and Best international documentary award at Focus Wales Film Festival in 2024.

Yara Asmaris a musician and video artist based in Beirut, Lebanon. Her music has been described as "Strange, adventurous, elongated and highly idiosyncratic” by Cyclic Defrost's Bob Baker Fish. Her video works include: i like it better when we lived on see-saw hill, clocks for dinner, and Mr. Samuel’s Teatime Stories (For Good Kids & Confused Adults) often incorporate puppetry and music.

The programme is supported by Alserkal Arts Foundation as part of our efforts to focus on research and conversation around curatorial practice.

Image courtesy: Still from The Rod and The Ring (2023) by Hala Al Salman.