IDFA 2023 Recap - Corresponding Cinemas’ Refusal to Comply

[December 07, 2023] We are releasing a conversation recorded on Tuesday, November 14th, 2023, at IDFA, where I met with Julian Ross and Farah Hasanbegović to recap Corresponding Cinemas.

Corresponding Cinemas was a new series at IDFA this year, and in many ways, it was an experiment to see what invisible connections surface when an institution decides to transfer curatorial control to filmmakers.

The idea is simple and compelling. It would be a series of films and conversations with filmmakers who have inspired one another, and the day would follow this chain of inspiration, with each filmmaker selecting the works of the next.

The series was planned months in advance and formally announced in September in the very first announcement the festival made about its program. It was reported that the event would kick off with Sky Hopinka and include Basma al-Sharif, Jumana Manna, Ibrahim Shaddad, and Abderrahmane Sissako.

Corresponding Cinemas was going to be a big focus of our coverage of IDFA, and Docs in Orbit spoke with the festival’s Artistic Director, Orwa Nyrabia, before the festival about this highly anticipated event in our previous episode.

In this episode, Farah, Julian, and I run through the events leading up to Corresponding Cinemas as we experienced them on the ground. We first discuss the opening night and the release of IDFA’s statement apologizing for a protest banner that appeared during the ceremony.

In their apology statement, IDFA condemned a slogan that was on the banner that read, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free” - and proclaimed that this slogan “should not be used in any way and by anybody anymore” despite a recent ruling by the Dutch Courts that this is not considered threatening, inflammatory or hate speech.

In response to IDFA denouncing this slogan, Jumana Manna, Basma al-Sharif, and Sky Hopinka published a joint statement refusing to comply with IDFA’s statement the evening before their participation in Corresponding Cinemas.

The series took place the following day, on Saturday, November 11, 2023, and Farah, Julian, and I recount how the day unfolded, detailing how each filmmaker used their screenings differently to transform a cinema space into a forum for urgent, meaningful, and needed exchanges. 

Moderated by Christina Zachariades

IDFA 2023 with Orwa Nyrabia

[November 08, 2023] Prior to the festival, Docs in Orbit sat with Orwa Nyrabia, the Artistic Director of IDFA, to discuss the role, responsibility, and relevancy of film festivals and how IDFA is meeting the current moment. We also discuss some of the new sections in the program, including the highly anticipated introduction of CORRESPONDING CINEMAS, a unique program featuring a series of films from filmmakers who have inspired one another, including Sky Hopinka, Basam al-Sharif, Jumana Manna, Ibrahim Shaddad, and Abderahmane Sissako. 

Moderated by Christina Zachariades. Image from Basma al-Sharif’s short film, Deep Sleep which is part of Corresponding Cinemas.

  • Born in Syria, Orwa Nyrabia started his career as an actor and journalist before moving into film production. In 2002, together with his partner and fellow filmmaker, Diana El Jeiroudi, they established an independent production company. In 2008, he moved into festival organizing where he and his partner launched DOX BOX which grew to be the most important documentary film gathering in the Arab world. Just before the 5th edition, the organizers made a public statement announcing the suspension of the festival in protest against the violation of human rights in Syria. Instead they advocated for Syrian films to be shown in festivals around the world as an act of solidarity in light of the violence that by then had taken hold in Syria. Orwa was subsequently arrested in Damascus and the international film community came together and successfully called on the Syrian Government for his release. Now exiled in Europe, Orwa continues advocating for the power of documentary film and the rights of filmmakers.

  • Christina is a researcher, filmmaker, and founding editor of Docs in Orbit, where she leads the curation of content.

  • 00:03:30 How is IDFA meeting the current moment

    00:08:22 Films in the program on Orwa's mind: Occupied City (2023) by Steve McQueen, Socialist Realism (2023) by Raul Ruiz and the 20th anniversary of Arna's Children (2003)

    00:12:00 SPECIAL SCREENINGS

    00:13:34 SIGNED

    00:16:28 16 WORLDS ON 16, including works by Agnes Varda, Sarah Maldoror, Chantal Akerman, Maya Deren, Robert Frank, and The First Year (1972) by Patricio Guzman and First Case. Second Case (1979), by Abbass Kiaristami

    00:21:30 FABRICATIONS, including notable works from Shirley Clarke, Rosine Mbakam, Safi Faye, and David Schickele

    00:26:26 CORRESPONDING CINEMAS, including works of Sky Hopinka, Basma Al Sharif, Jumanna Manna, Ibrahim Shaddad Abderahmane Sissako

    00:40:00 - 00:46:00 WANG BING, Guest of Honor and his curated TOP 10 films

Jumana Manna on Docs in Orbit (July 2022)

[July 12, 2022] A conversation with Jumana Manna about her feature-length film, Foragers (IDFA Best of Fests, 2022) and the dramas around the practice of foraging for wild edible plants in Palestine/Israel.  Shot in the Golan Heights, the Galilee and Jerusalem, Foragers artfully blends fiction, documentary, and archival footage to portray the impact of Israeli nature protection laws on these customs.

Moderated by Teyama Alkamli

  • Jumana Manna is a visual artist and filmmaker. Through sculpture, filmmaking, and occasional writing, Manna deals with the paradoxes of preservation practices, particularly within the fields of archaeology, agriculture and law. Her practice considers the tension between the modernist traditions of categorisation and conservation and the unruly potential of ruination as an integral part of life and its regeneration. Jumana was raised in Jerusalem and lives in Berlin.

    She has participated in multiple film festivals including Berlinale, Viennale, BAFICI, IFFR, Cairo Cinema Days, Goteborg film festival, Ambulante, Cinéma du Réel, Art of the Real. Her Wild Relatives (2018) won CPH:DOX’s New Visions Award, Sheffield Doc’s Environmental Film Award, DokuFest Kosovo’s Green Dox Award, and Palestine Cinema Days’ Sunbird Award. Manna’s solo exhibitions include Thirty Plumbers in the Belly, M HKA, Antwerp (2021); Tabakalera, San Sebastian, Spain (2019); The Setting of Noon, Home Works Forum 8: Ashkal Alwan, Beirut (2019); A Small Big Thing, Henie Onstad Museum, Høvikodden, Oslo (2018); A Kulturrådet – Norwegian Arts Council, Berkeley Art

    Magical Substance Flows into Me, Mercer Union, Toronto (2017), Malmö Kunsthall, Malmo (2016), and Chisenhale Gallery, London (2015).

  • Born in Aleppo and raised in Dubai, Teyama Alkamli is a filmmaker and screenwriter based in Toronto, Canada. Her visually tender and deeply human work deals predominantly with issues of identity, sexuality, displacement, and migration. Most recently, she was the screenwriter for the film Concrete Valley (Berlinale Forum, 2023). Teyama is an alumna of DocNomads, the European Mobile Film School, Hot Docs Emerging Filmmaker Lab, and the Canadian Film Centre's Director Lab.

  • Show Notes and Transcript

Basma al-Sharif on Docs in Orbit (June 2021)

[June 15, 2021] A conversation with Basma Alsharif about four of her short films: FARTHER THAN THE EYE CAN SEE, HOME MOVIE GAZA, WE BEGAN BY MEASURING DISTANCE and OH PERSECUTED, which were programmed in 2021 on Another Screen, FOR A FREE PALESTINE: Films by Palestinian Women, curated by Daniella Shreir.  

Moderated by Kristen van Schie

  • Basma al-Sharif (b. 1983) is a Palestinian artist working in cinema and installation. She developed her practice nomadically between the Middle East, Europe, and North America and is currently based in Berlin. Her practice looks at cyclical political conflicts and confronts the legacy of colonialism through satirical, immersive, and lyrical works.

    She received an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2007, was a resident of the Fondazione Antonio Ratti in 2009, and the Pavillon Neuflize OBC at the Palais de Tokyo in 2014-15. She received a Jury prize at the Sharjah Biennial in 2009, the Visual Arts Grant from the Fundación Botín in 2010, Mophradat’s Consortium Commissions in 2018, and is currently a fellow of the Berlin Artistic Research Grant Programme for 2022-2023.

    Al-Sharif’s major exhibitions include: the 5th edition of Kochi-Muziris Biennale, the Ruttenberg Contemporary Photography Series for the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago, Modern Mondays at MOMA, CCA Glasgow, the Whitney Biennial, Here and Elsewhere at the New Museum, Berlin Documentary Forum, and Manifesta 8. Her films have been screened in the international film festivals of Locarno, Berlin, Mar del Plata, Milan, London, Toronto, New York, Montreal, and Yamagata amongst others. Her first exhibition at Imane Farès, On Love & Other Landscapes, with Yazan Khalili, was held in 2013.

  • Kristen is an award-winning journalist from South Africa and has worked at Johannesburg's oldest daily newspaper The Star, before joining the southern Africa bureau of global news agency AFP as a correspondent. She has filed dispatches from courtrooms and crime scenes, war zones and election queues, and a scientific research vessel on an expedition in the Antarctic. She was also part of the research team on Influence, an investigative feature film, and the first South African documentary to premiere at Sundance.

    Kristen is also a graduate of DocNomads, the European film school in Documentary Film Directing.

  • Show Notes and Transcript