Twin Cities Arab Film Festival 2023

Archives and Secrets (Shorts Segment)

Expired October 2, 2023 5:00 AM
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Archives allow us to glimpse the past, and they provide integral information for contemporary viewers and researchers to understand and convey stories that might not otherwise be available. But fragments from the past also provide rich commentary on our present, as they interrupt our view of the world, often reshaping and redefining our most deeply rooted ideas. The short films in this segment stitch together archives and secrets––in the form of documents, images, and plants––sharing both personal and collective memories from the past to reimagine the present and future.

When Shaima Al-Tamimi’s paternal grandfather migrated from Yemen to Zanzibar half a century ago to find work , little did he know that migration would continue as a pattern for later generations of his family. Having lived through a deadly revolution in the early ‘60s powered by British colonialism, he fled back to Yemen with members of his family including Shaima’s father. Fifty-five years and five countries later, Shaima has settled in Qatar after being raised in the United Arab Emirates. She is a member of a generation of Yemenis who have grown up confused, marginalized, and deprived of opportunities to thrive due to the limitations of being a Yemeni passport–holder living outside their homeland. Don’t Get Too Comfortable fuses archival images, found footage, parallax animation, and sound design to create a multimedia letter to the director’s paternal grandfather, reflecting on the migration and resettlement of her family following his death over fifty years ago. Family photos, images of archival materials, and self portraits by the director place the viewer in between time and space, calling attention to the collective feeling of statelessness and sense of being felt by Yemeni migrants and their descents.

  • Year
    2021
  • Runtime
    9 minutes
  • Language
    Arabic, English, Swahili
  • Country
    Yemen, Kenya, Qatar, United States
  • Subtitle Language
    English
  • Director
    Shaima Al Tamimi
  • Screenwriter
    Shaima Al Tamimi
  • Producer
    Shaima Al Tamimi, Mayar Hamdan
  • Cast
    Shaima Al Tamimi, Saleh Al Tamimi, Saeeda Al Tamimi
  • Editor
    Mayar Hamdan
  • Production Design
    Shaima Al Tamimi
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