Challenging Canadian Complicity in Israeli Apartheid
Date: Wednesday, December 4
Time: 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Location: Saint Paul University Campus, Room TBA
Featuring:
Rana Nazzal Hamadeh, Palestinian artist and filmmaker
Dan Sawyer, Punch Up Collective
Rachel Small, World Beyond War Canada
The Education for Liberation Collective invites you to a popular education event designed to help us better understand the political, institutional, and corporate connections that sustain Canada's complicity in Israeli apartheid.
Register here: https://actionnetwork.org/events/complicity/
Regent Park Film Festival Shorts Screening
Homemaking: In our Bodies and our Lands
2:00pm-3:40pm
Location: Ada Slaight Hall, Daniels Spectrum | 585 Dundas Street East
The works in this program explore the deep connections between Indigeneity, homemaking, and our relationships with the land and each other. These shorts offer narratives that centre the work of homemaking, reclaiming traditions, nurturing relationships with one another and the land, as well as sustaining cultural heritage and protecting ancestral histories for future generations.
Za’atar workshop
Join artist Rana Nazzal Hamadeh and CUAG educator-in-residence Jade Sullivan for a free workshop of cooking and conversation inspired by the themes and questions in Rana’s installation work 1/1000th of a Dunam, presented in A Dream of Return.
The Arabic word for thyme, za’atar is also the name of a spice blend made of dried thyme leaves, sumac, toasted sesame seeds and salt. A staple of the Palestinian pantry, za’atar spice is often used as a topping on freshly baked flatbread or as a dip paired with olive oil and labneh.
The wild thyme used in za’atar spice grows abundantly in the hills of occupied Palestine and is used in popular dishes, added to tea, or taken medicinally. In 1977, Israel outlawed the collection of wild thyme, criminalizing its collection with a law whose enactment has exclusively affected Palestinians. Despite the law, Palestinians continue to harvest thyme and make za’atar spice.
Recognizing the Stranger with Isabella Hammad
Hosted by Rana Nazzal Hamadeh
Join us for a conversation with Isabella Hammad, the award-winning author of the novels The Parisian and Enter Ghost and one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists, about her new book, Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative .
Nine days before October 7, 2023, Isabella Hammad delivered the Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture at Columbia University. The text of her seminal speech and her afterword, written in the early weeks of 2024, together make up a searing appraisal of the war on Palestine during what seems a turning point in the narrative of human history.
https://writersfestival.org/events/fall-2024-in-person-events/recognizing-the-stranger
Mill Valley Film Festival / Shorts: I Was Here
“You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.” In this program indigenous filmmakers embody this belief expressed by Vice President Kamala Harris in their explorations of how where and who we came from informs the person we are today.
Ma ŋaye ka Masaala a se ka Wɔmɛti (From God to Man): Filmmaker Lansana Mansaray documents his return home.
Why The Cattle Wait: The intimate tale of a goddess who tries to win back the affection of her former lover who has moved on in life without her.
ÁHKUIN: Three generations of women in a Sámi family have connected over time through practicing joik—a Sámi oral tradition that combines music and storytelling.
Tayal Forest Club: Through the help of their ancestor, two Atayal teens manage to find not only their way home but also themselves.
We Would Be Freer: A reflection on the connection between colonization and nature through the use of sumac by a Palestinian refugee and a woman from the Mohawk community of Kahnawá:ke.
Four Nights and a Fire: A young Ojibwe photographer stubbornly takes on the responsibility of keeping a sacred fire alive for four consecutive days and nights in mourning of his father. His father's spirit tries to reach him from the other side.
Exhibition: A Dream of Return
“…they used to know, and dream, and return, and dream, and know, and return…”
In the closing lines of his 1990 poem The Tragedy of Narcissus The Comedy of Silver, Mahmoud Darwish imagines the possibility of return not as a backwards glance, but as an indefinite futurity; a dream. Doing so, the exiled Palestinian poet helps envision a network of diasporic places and times, weaving together difficult pasts and hopeful futures through creative resistance in the present.
Looking to socially- and politically engaged artistic practices, A Dream of Return highlights diverse creative responses to the theme of “return,” broadly defined. The artists reveal poetic links between dispossessed peoples and material cultures, visualizing histories and futures of liberatory return. This conceptualization of “return” interlinks and complicates artistic self-expressions of Indigeneity, diaspora, belonging, community and identity.
This exhibition asks: What might it look like to return — or to return to — culturally-significant lands, cultures and objects? Which modes of artistic return can materially or symbolically contribute to healing historical ruptures? And how might such artistic interventions help form resistant, decolonizing allyships in the present?
Exhibition: P is for Palestine
Curators : Ariane De Blois and Muhammad Nour ElKhairy
Artists : Bayan Abu Nahla, Amal Al Nakhala, Muhammad Nour ElKhairy, Nada El-Omari, Yara El-Ghadban, Mona Hatoum, Rana Nazzal Hamadeh and Rehab Nazzal
Opening : Saturday, September 21, from 2 PM to 5 PM
P is for Palestine is a collective exhibition featuring conceptual, experimental, and poetic works by artists from within Palestine and the diaspora. Anchored in the belief that language is political, the exhibition delves into semantic and discursive issues specific to Palestinian reality, present and past. The selected works share a particular affinity with words—whether written, signed, or spoken—to evoke, narrate, or name various aspects of the Palestinian experience.
Screening: A Tyrant’s Fear of Songs at Images Festival
Friday, April 12, 2024 / 2:30PM EDT / Innis Town Hall / 2 Sussex Ave, Toronto, ON M5S 1J5
In this time of heightened war and unfolding genocide, the role of the witness remains at the forefront of our collective attention. Daily incursions on Palestinian civilians are live streamed direct to screens, held in our hands. As Ariella Azoulay writes in the Civil Contract of Photography, viewing images of such catastrophic circumstances becomes a civil act. The role of the witness affirms the citizenship of those who have been denied their place; to witness serves as an affirmation of life and inherent human value.
While the act of witnessing remains necessary, the role of beauty holds a tender, easily overlooked yet crucial position. We must find refuge to support the flickering fires of hope, not only for those in most dire need but also for weary witnesses, relentless activists, and allies in joint struggles across the globe.
In the late Palestinian author Mahmoud Darwish’ poem “On This Land,” he writes of the valiant and steadfast love of land, cultural endurance, and the “tyrant’s fear of songs.” The Tyrant's Fear of Songs short film program presents works by international filmmakers who experiment with dreams, poetry, and beauty to address our social and civil contracts to one another as we battle systems of tyranny.
These short films reflect fractured and layered settler/colonial histories carried on land and bodies. They traverse time, genre, and narrative style. Reflecting on past and present histories of slavery, occupation, and indentured labour, as well as musings on our real and virtual dystopian worlds, these works are united through their lessons for resistance. The spectral horrors of domination are transformed into songs of fortitude and communion, offering rejuvenating sustenance for the long struggle ahead.
Screening: International Film Festival of Ottawa
SUNDAY, MARCH 24 / 7:00 PM / OTTAWA ART GALLERY
Program: We Would Be Freer, A Happy Day
Reception: 9:00 PM
SHORT FILM \
We Would Be Freer
بنكون اكتر احرار
2023 / 9 minutes / Ottawa / Director: Rana Nazzal Hamadeh / Languages: English, Arabic
On different sides of the world, two communities find connection through their use of sumac. Mimicking the progression of the plant’s flowers from yellow to green to red, We Would Be Freer is a cyclical reflection on connection to land, sustainability, and wild plants.
FEATURE \
A Happy Day
2023 / 113 minutes / Norway, Denmark / Director: Hisham Zaman/ Languages: Norwegian, Sámi / Subtitles: English
At work: Confronting Anti-Palestinian Censorship Panel + Button-making
Workers are facing heightened censorship and discipline in response to expressions of solidarity with Palestine. This panel invites workers, including arts workers, to reflect on tactics for undertaking Palestinian liberation solidarity actions at work and outside the workplace. The discussion will touch on the Palestinian Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel, legal rights, and more. Moderated by Hassan Husseini, with Rana Nazzal Hamadeh, John Greyson and Wassim Garzouzi.
No Pride in Genocide: Queer Cinema for Palestine
Vines Art Festival is based on the unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Səl ̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xwməθkwəy̓ əm (Musqueam) Nations. These are lands that, like Palestine, have been deeply impacted by settler colonial violence. We emphasize our solidarity with Palestinians through sharing an intergenerational program that uses movement, music, and storytelling as a means to challenge settler colonial narratives while reclaiming roots and place. An in-person event at grunt gallery will feature a shortened film screening, panel discussion, and additional films by Rana Nazzal. The full program featuring Edzi’u, Jamelie Hassan, Hamidreza Jadid, Eddy van Wyk, Tʼuyʼtʼtanat-Cease Wyss, Sobhi Zobaidi, and Alize Zorlutuna, will be available to screen online from Dec 6–10.
from the river to the sea: Here and There
Film screening and discussion: VIVO Media Arts Centre is hosting from the river to the sea, a global collective initiative established by a group of displaced media artists and activists all in solidarity with Palestine.
Their third screening is a short film screening where they bring four short films, directed by Rehab Nazzal, Rana Nazzal, Mohammad Harb and Razan AlSalah to you. Join us for this event taking place on December 2nd, in support and solidarity with Palestinians. Followed by a conversation with artist and filmmaker Razan AlSalah.
Truth, Power, and Palestine: A Teach-In to Build Solidarity
Truth, Power, and Palestine: A Teach-In to Build Solidarity is a multi-institution, in-person event bringing together poets, activists, students and scholars to build solidarity with Palestine in the face of grief and despair. In the current climate of fear, criminalization and censorship, how do we understand the interconnectedness of settler colonial violence in Canada and in Palestine? How do we sustain momentum and movements in support of Palestinian community members and take action locally? This event aims to encourage collaborative work across communities to support Palestinians in their on-going struggle for justice.
Film Premiere: we would be freer
We would be freer premieres at Toronto Palestine Film Festival as part of the Home Grown Shorts line-up
In-theatre: 6:00 PM at TIFF BELL LIGHT BOX Toronto ON
Online Launch: 6:00 PM World-Wide (available for on-demand viewing from the theatre launch date until Oct. 4, 11:59pm)
Films: a tangled web drowning in honey | Baq'a The Open Valley | we would be freer | I Feel Uncomfortable on the Balcony | Listed | In Her Shoes
Art Nest Pop-Up Exhibition
As part of the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair, Art Nest will feature commissioned artwork by five artists responding to the structure, architecture and meaning of Nathan Phillips Square. Stop by Art Nest to experience interactive and engaging public art works.
Curated by Fatma Hendawy Yehia
Participating artists: Kristi Chen, Michelle Cieloszczyk, Rana Nazzal Hamadeh, Studio Rat, Stephanie Singh
Friday, 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM
Saturday, 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM
Sunday, 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Exhibition Opening: Infrastructures of Dissent
Join us for Infrastructures of Dissent, an exhibition curated by Mitra Fakhrashrafi and Tara Bursey. Featuring the work of artists Tings Chak, Hannia Cheng, Lynn Hutchinson Lee and Ingrid Mayrhofer, Rana Nazzal Hamadeh and Anthony Youssef with Alan Sears. Presented as part of the Mayworks Festival of Working People and the Arts.
In 1945, Ford auto workers in Windsor went on a 99-day strike and won. Leading up to this historic win, workers and their families gathered in the nearby restaurants and cultural centres of Drouillard Road to learn, to dance, and to act. In his writing on the infrastructure of dissent, sociologist Alan Sears suggests it is these forged networks of solidarity and celebration that nurtured the militancy of the strikers.
Infrastructures of Dissent pays tribute to the parks, restaurants, shisha lounges and cafés, clubs, sanctuaries and union halls that have seeded both the formal organizing efforts and the informal knowledge exchanges that lead to collective action. Across geographies and against all odds, we ask: what ways can we rebuild infrastructures of dissent and foster community power? More here.
Concordia Book Launch: Driving in Palestine
Driving in Palestine is a research-creation project by acclaimed artist Rehab Nazzal, who explores the visible indices of the politics of mobility that she encountered firsthand while traversing the occupied West Bank between 2010 and 2020. This photography book consists of 160 black and white photographs, hand-drawn maps and critical essays in Arabic and English by Palestinian and Canadian scholars and artists.
The event includes presentation by the author and two contributors, Rana Nazzal Hamadeh and Nyla Matuk, copies of the book, Arabic food, and music. More here.
Exhibition Opening: New Creatives, Jerusalem
Five Palestinian emerging artists will be exhibiting in the third round of the "New Creatives" exhibition.
Join us this Friday, November 18, 2022 for "The New Creatives" exhibition opening at Al Ma'mal Foundation in Jerusalem’s Old City at 17:30 (free entrance). The exhibition runs until December 15, 2022. The exhibition opening will be followed by a mesmerizing performance by Levon Kalaydjian and the band.
Exhibition Opening: Salons
“Salons: Collections of Memory and Loss” is open at the Qattan Foundation in Ramallah from May 28 until August 23, 2022. The exhibition brings together the work of 9 artists: Amer Abu Matar, Essa Grayeb, Lara Salous, Mahdi Baraghithi, Ola Zaitoun, Rana Battrawi, Rana Nazzal, Reem Masri, and Sham Abusaleh.
Toronto Arab Film Festival: “Visions of home” Shorts programme
Something from there screening as part of the Toronto Arab Film Festival “Visions of Home” shorts programme, alongside Visions of Basra by Noor Gatih, Brown Bread & Apricots by Serene Husni, and Memory is a Dying Horse by Samer Najari.
Available to stream online.
Co-presented by the Regent Park Film Festival, the Toronto Palestine Film Festival, and the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto. https://watch.eventive.org/taf22/play/62603eefdb093c0093833871/625f4dfa3bc6c7003e69ec8e
Arts Against Imprisonment Presents: Palestinian Prisoners Day 2022
10AM PDT / 1PM EDT / 8PM PALESTINE
Excited to be co-hosting this event on Palestinian Prisoners Day. We’ll hear from former Palestinian prisoners and artists that attribute their work to the Palestinian struggle: Chris Gazaleh, Rana Bishara, Mustafa Sheta, and Clarissa Bitar.
Israeli Apartheid Week Global Rally
Saturday, March 26th
10AM EST / 3PM GMT / 5PM Palestine
On this day, we will be joined by artists from around the world centering art and culture as critical arenas of our collective resistance to Israeli apartheid and all forms of racism and oppression. From dance, to music, to poetry, the rally will highlight the critical role that culture and art play in decolonizing our minds.
This rally comes as part of the Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW), which over the last 18 years has propelled discussion of Israeli apartheid and organizing for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns into the popular narrative in order to help bring an end to this crime against humanity.
Voices on the Ground: Webinar
Voices on the Ground: Webinar with Activists in Palestine
Join the Palestinian Youth Movement in Montreal, Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights at McGill and Concordia for a Zoom webinar with Palestinian activists on the ground!
We will have the pleasure to speak with Mariam Barghouti and Rana Nazzal about the situation in Palestine in the aftermath of the May uprisings and the importance of BDS and international solidarity.
1PM EST
Register: https://us02web.zoom.us/.../reg.../WN_Cxh3v7coQZOUJYV2TdHcmw
Screening/panel: Queer Cinema for Palestine Film Festival
Available on demand from 4pm ET on November 11, until November 20.
In this powerful screening and panel, filmmakers Indigenous to Turtle Island and filmmakers from Palestine share how they negotiate complex and intersecting relationships to land, home, queerness, labour, art-making, and representation. This program features a land acknowledgement presented by Layla Black and a panel with filmmakers Qais Assali, Justin Ducharme, Whess Harman, and Rana Nazzal, moderated by Wanda Nanibush.
Artist Talk
1pm EST on Zoom.
Join Rana Nazzal Hamadeh in conversation with Dr. Chandni Desai, Assistant Professor in the Critical Studies of Equity and Solidarity at the University of Toronto, about the multimedia exhibition 1/1000th of a Dunam
1/1000th of a Dunam exhibition
1/1000th of a Dunam is a multimedia exhibition exploring Palestinian assertions of belonging through the site of soil—an epistemic space where land and belonging are imagined, when in reality they have been denied. Displaced peoples often collect and cherish soils from their lands of origin, and this practice embodies a knowledge explored in this exhibition. All the soil used here was collected in Palestine. It symbolizes memory and takes on new meaning as it travels from one occupied land to another.
To visit, see details here.