Online | Screenings

Parables for the Future Sun

Alaa Abu Asad, Basma al-Sharif, Kamal Aljafari, Larissa Sansour, Muhammad El Khairy, Rehab Nazzal

Curated by: Images Festival | Content Warning: Strong strobing effect throughout Deep Sleep by Basma al-Sharif

P is for Palestine

Muhammad El Khairy

Jordan, Palestine | 2018 | Digital | 6 min | Arabic and English with English subtitles

Language is political in this subtle short film that shows an unnamed man in Amman, Jordan repeating decontextualized political English words all including the letter P - a letter that doesn't exist in the Arabic language, meaning that one’s pronunciation of it is coded socially and economically.

Images Festival is humbled to present Parables for the Future Sun, an online program that features Palestinian artists and filmmakers who have worked with the festival over the past ten years. With contributions by Alaa Abu Asad, Basma al-Sharif, Kamal Aljafari, Larissa Sansour, Muhammad Nour ElKhairy and Rehab Nazzal, the program oscillates between reality and possibility, soaring across generations, throughout the diaspora and back home again.

Parables for the Future Sun is an offering through video of wishes, tales, and testimony to the sun for safekeeping. It is dedicated to the possibility of a bright, abundant Palestine. We continue to urge the cessation of destruction of innocent life and essential infrastructure amounting to war crimes under international law. We plead with our local and national leaders to work on ending the genocide as well as the occupation and apartheid in Palestine in alignment with the global community of human rights advocates including B'Tselem, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the United Nations.

Images has had the privilege of presenting work by many Palestinian artists and curators over the course of our 37-year history. As a film festival operating on stolen land, we acknowledge the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Final Report and will work to platform the voices of artists at a time when voices are being suppressed, censored, and erased. Please continue to share and support the work of Palestinian artists and filmmakers. Parables for the Future Sun is available globally for two weeks beginning February 15 and extending until February 29, 2024. It is free to the public.

Content Warning: Strong strobing effect throughout Deep Sleep by Basma al-Sharif

Alaa Abu Asad

Alaa Abu Asad is an artist, researcher, and photographer. Language and plants are central themes through which he develops alternative trajectories where values of (re)presentation, translation, viewing, reading, and understanding can intersect. His work takes the form of writing, film, and interactive installations, in which he visually represents his research and explores the boundaries of languages.

Basma al-Sharif

Born stateless, of Palestinian heritage, artist/filmmaker Basma al-Sharif explores cyclical political histories and conflicts. In films and installations that move backward and forward in history, between place and non-place, she confronts the legacy of colonialism through satirical, immersive, and lyrical work.

Kamal Aljafari

Kamal Aljafari is a Palestinian filmmaker. He attended the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne and now lives in Berlin, Germany. His most recent work, Paradiso, XXXI, 108, premiered at Corti d’Autore in the Locarno Film Festival 2022. He just completed A Fidai Film and is preparing a fiction film to be shot in Jaffa.

Larissa Sansour

Larissa Sansour was born in 1973 in East Jerusalem, Palestine. She uses science fiction to address social and political issues. She represented Denmark at the 58th Venice Biennial. In 2020, Larissa was the shared recipient of the prestigious Jarman Award. Working mainly with film, Sansour also produces installations, photos, and sculptures.

Muhammad El Khairy

Muhammad Nour Elkairy is a Palestinian filmmaker, video artist and film programmer from Jordan, currently based in Tio'tia:ke (Montréal). He holds a MFA in Studio Arts: Film Production at Concordia University. His work is particularly concerned with the legacies of colonial, political, and economic power. His work has been shown in several international film festivals and art galleries.

Rehab Nazzal

Rehab Nazzal is a Palestinian-born multidisciplinary artist and educator based in Toronto, Canada. Her work deals with the effects of settler colonial violence on peoples, on land, and on other non-human life in colonized territories.

Images Festival operates on land stolen from the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, the Huron-Wendat, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. Tkáron:to is currently home to diverse Indigenous and Métis peoples as well as people who settle on this land. As part of Treaty 13 and the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Covenant, we acknowledge that we all eat from the same bowl and spoon, and must take only what we need, ensuring resources are available for all.

As art workers, artists, and curators, we see the process of untangling ourselves from settler complicity as internal, structural, and ongoing. It is not something to be taken lightly. The inclusion of Indigenous artists and curators into our program is just the first step of necessary and deeper change. Extending from our organizational accountability work, we strive to not only undo forms of complicity, but also actively create an environment and infrastructure that can support Indigenous peoples who work with us.

Images expresses our solidarity with Indigenous people on Turtle Island and globally. We are committed to continuing to learn, critique, and challenge the settler colonial structures we are complicit in.