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Athens Design Forum is pleased to present an inaugural collaboration with Shasha Movies, the independent streaming service for South-West Asian and North African cinema. Co-curating a selection of five films from the February program of Revolt Against the Sun, the following selection emphasizes contemporary Iraqi video art produced between 2017-2022. Revolt Against the Sun is a title borrowed from a collected book of poems by Iraqi modernist and feminist poet Nazik al-Malaika. She was a pioneer of free verse, radically departing from the classical rhyme form that had dominated Arabic poetry for centuries. In her spirit, Shasha Movies’ program of films include works that revolt against form, against structure, and against the sun.

Rooting our program within Athens, the screening will finish with the work of Cypriot artist Marina Xenofontos, Sunlight Vandalism, represented by Athens-based Hot Wheels Gallery. The film deciphers the history of a Kurdish woman’s relation to private and adopted spaces across her migration, revisiting the concept of home.

The films enrich our Athens Design Forum’s 2023-2024 ANTHROPOS-TOPOS theme, deciphering how humans coexist with places at the proxy of design. Transposing the socio-political dimensions of design, we explore how the films unveil labor practices, constructed space, and identity creation. 

Partially captured in regions of Greece, Pre-Image (Blind as the Mother Tongue) utilizes design as a bodily device. Reflecting on the humanist parameters of space, Hiwa K integrates design elements from the artwork  “0° - Blind Spot, Where Beloved is…”  into the experimental documentary. Adel Abidin’s Anthem explores the construction of identity in public spaces through sound intervention, while Visions of Basra by Noor Gatih provides an overture on memory and estrangement tied to the experience of home in displacement. Cineholic by Sherko Abbas and Shirwan Fatih follows a group of men from Kirkuk in their quest to resurface a film community; the film depicts the transformation of collective film venues into car garages. Sama Alshaibi’s See Without Being Seen contextualizes Orientalist photography in the Middle East and North Africa along the historical timeline. It reflects on the language of photography, in its violent connotations, which bares its history in the colonial framework. 

Hiwa K Pre-Image (Blind as the Mother Tongue) – (17’, 2017)

Sherko Abbas & Shirwan Fatih Cineholic (25’, 2021)

Adel Abidin Anthem (3’, 2019)

Noor Gatih Visions of Basra (4’, 2021)

Sama Alshaibi See Without Being Seen (13’, 2022)

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Marina Xenofontos Sunlight Vandalism (13’, 2020)

Presented by Hot Wheels Gallery 

With special thanks to Hot Wheels Athens for enabling the Q&A with Marina Xenofontos and BIOS Cinematheque for their gracious support.

For Inquiries:

Katerina Papanikolopoulos, Founder

info@athensdesignforum.com