RELENTLESS REFUSALS features recent short animated films by The Hakawi Animation Team, and animators Naaman Azhari, and Arash Akhgari, presenting perspectives from characters that refuse to silently accept the conditions or struggles they face. Included are stories told from children’s perspectives who plainly see and refute their unjust situations, brought about either from within their own societies or by occupying forces. Other perspectives highlight protest movements or a rejection of the world as we know it. 

Through workshops across refugee camps in Gaza, the Hakawi Animation Team have been working with children aged 10 - 13 to collectively bring to life their stories and lived experiences. The short stop-motion animations highlight various aspects of society in Gaza, both before and following the Genocide, with a lens that is playful and genuine but that does not shy away from the unbearable realities on the ground. 

Naaman Azhari’s films share gripping emotional stories between two mothers and their respective sons. The Magic Boat highlights the gruesome journeys that countless refugees from Syria and countries across the SWANA world continue to undertake. The film goes beyond the headlines in newspapers which reduce these individuals to numbers, tragedies or political scapegoats, and instead encompasses their lives and memories before embarking on their perilous journey. Threaded, engages societal stigmas and parental expectations placed on children. Weaving memories into the narrative through flashbacks, the film shares a mother’s love and pride for her son while unconsciously denying and concealing aspects of his life that go against the status quo. 

Arash Akhgari’s In the Shallows is an indulgent visual journey into the overwhelming nature of mass media today–from neverending emails to non-stop advertisements, and from perpetual breaking news items to addictive entertainment platforms. Created using intricate collages with ink and paint animations, the work hypnotizes the viewers’ senses while translating the inherent isolation of the digital era and the imminent age of AI. Akhgari and Gilnaz Arzpeyma’s collaborative animation Woman/ژن , is a emotive visual journey, using documentary-style footage embedded with animation, into the Women Life Freedom protests in Iran. Layering chants, poetry, music and video documentation soundtracks from the feminist and women-led revolutionary uprising, the short conveys a vision of civil disobedience as a collective performance of refusal.  

Engaging with diverse animation techniques, the works in RELENTLESS REFUSALS are able to convey the complex and at times contradicting emotions of their creators in a humanizing light. Each narrative contains elements of documentary storytelling, and reflects on the struggles of navigating situations and consequences often out of the protagonists’ control. Despite this, the stories are testimonies of experiences that are not unique to the individual creators, but that reflect larger urgent discourses that are taking place within communities around the region and beyond that cannot be silenced nor ignored.

RELENTLESS REFUSALS is curated by Lila Nazemian and is co-presented by ArteEast and UnionDocs. This program is part of the legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, which preserves and presents 20 years of film and video programming by ArteEast. The films from RELENTLESS REFUSALS will be screened in-person at UnionDocs on April 24 followed by a discussion with Arash Akhgari moderated by the curator.