R21: aka Restoring Solidarity + Bint Mbareh

Programmed by Maria Paradinas

Both a powerful experimental documentary and a living archive, R21: aka Restoring Solidarity reflects on an overlooked movement of anti-imperialism between Japan and Palestine.

The film reflects on a collection of twenty 16mm films that were safeguarded in Tokyo by the Japanese solidarity movement with Palestine between the 1960s and 1980s. R21 refers to Reel 21, an undelivered solidarity letter written by a Japanese activist that got lost on its way to a Palestinian filmmaker.

“It is also a thank you letter, from Palestinian filmmakers to their Japanese counterparts, for keeping these films safe, and for telling a story of people's struggle imprinted not only on celluloid, but on the consciousness of a generation.” - Director Mohanad Yaqubi

The screening will be followed by an audio performance by sound artist Bint Mbareh. Bint Mbareh makes music and sound because she believes their uses can still be evoked, rather than remembered. She now studies death and rebirth as analogies for necessary communal upheavals, still looking for these significations in Palestinian landscape, now in the shrine of Nabi-Musa (AS), the prophet Moses.

There will be a 15 minute interval between the film and the performance.