Program #3: Vocabulary of Abscence + Music Performance

DAY 2: Our Eyes Have Exhausted the Vocabulary of Death

Borrowing its title from Etel Adnan’s Jenin, this program brings together films that challenge the colonial and authoritarian use of visual media. By reframing archives as spaces of resistance and reclamation, these works highlight memory’s survival and vulnerability, offering insights into how storytelling can preserve histories, forge solidarity, and foster hope amidst loss.
Organized into three sections—Two Rivers and a Wind, Resisting Oblivion, and Vocabulary of Absence—the program traverses landscapes of conflict and displacement, connecting stories across borders to expose shared struggles and resist erasure. Together, these works reimagine archives as dynamic spaces that resist erasure and foster solidarity, bridging past and present struggles through the transformative power of storytelling.

Program #3: Vocabulary of Abscence + Music Performance

Vocabulary of Absence draws on family archives to reflect on the losses of migration—fractured homes, loved ones left behind, and disrupted social fabrics. By creatively engaging with archival gaps, these films transform absence into a fertile ground for reconstructing stories, enriching both personal and collective memory.

Music performance by Atena Eshtiaghi

Short film program:

I am trying to remember (D: Pegah Ahangarani; Iran/Czech Republic 2021; 15'; Persian, English subtitles)
I asked: "Why have they erased you?" He said: "Maybe they are scared." I said: "Whoever is scared, should erase themselves." He said: "In that case, the faces of the living would all be gone and only the dead would remain."

3350 KM (D: Sara Kontar; France 2023; 13'; Arabic, English subtitles)
Father and daughter have been separated by 3,350 kilometres for seven years. He lives in Syria, she lives in exile in Paris. All they have left is to talk on the internet. The daughter records the conversations.

x + x = + (D: Niyaz Saghari; Iran/UK 2020; 7'; Persian, English subtitles)
+x+=+ is a meditation on the overwhelming process of grief and healing through the use of archive sound and image.

Random 13 minutes (D: Israa Issa Mahameed; 2024; 13'; Arabic, English subtitles)
A Random 13 Minutes captures an intimate phone conversation between Israa Issa Mahameed, living in the peaceful Norway, and her mother in Nablus, one of the most tense areas in Palestine. The conversation was recorded on December 30, 2022, at 3 a.m.

Curated by Vincent E., Sarah Savalanpour and Shadi Tabibzadeh