Spaces of Exception (2019)

Synopsis: Spaces of Exception investigates and juxtaposes the struggles, communities, and spaces of the American Indian reservation and the Palestinian refugee camp. The film was shot from 2014 to 2017 in Arizona, New Mexico, New York, and South Dakota, as well as in Lebanon and the West Bank. Directed by Matt Peterson and Malek Rasamny, it is an attempt to understand the significance of the land—its memory and divisions—and the conditions for life, community, and sovereignty. Spaces of Exception comes out of the long-term multimedia project The Native and the Refugee, which has been presented in Canada, Denmark, Ecuador, England, France, Guatemala, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Portugal, Syria, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates, within the refugee camps and reservations were the film was shot, and at venues including cinemas, museums, and universities.

Filmmaker Bios:

Matt Peterson is an organizer at Woodbine, an experimental space in New York City. He co-directed the documentary features Scenes from a Revolt Sustained (2014) and Spaces of Exception (2018), and co-edited the books In the Name of the People (2018) and The Mohawk Warrior Society (2022).

Malek Rasamny co-directed the research project The Native and the Refugee, the feature film "Spaces of Exception" and is the co-editor of the upcoming publication The Mohawk Warrior Society: A Handbook on Sovreignty and Survival (2022) by PM Press. He is currently a doctoral candidate in the department of Social Anthropology and Ethnology at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris.