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.

Originally built in 1904, the Haskell building was designed as a symbol of unity between Canada and the US and is one of the only cross-border theaters in the world. Anyone can enter unchecked and, though a thick black line runs through the entire building, once inside, the border all but disappears. Filmed on location to activate the legal and symbolic potential of the site, 45th Parallel unfolds as a monologue in five acts, performed by the acclaimed filmmaker Mahdi Fleifel. The story centers on Hernández vs. Mesa, a judicial case covering the fatal 2010 shooting of an unarmed fifteen-year-old Mexican national by a US Border Patrol agent. At the supreme court, Mesa’s bullet, which crossed the US/Mexico border, began to implicate missiles fired in Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Libya. If this murder could be tried in the US, so could the 91,340 drone strikes. Each act of the monologue is demarcated by a scenographic change in the hand-painted backdrop on the Opera House stage.

45th Parallel

Focusing on the Haskell Free Library and Opera House—a unique municipal site that straddles the jurisdictions of Canada and the United States—45th Parallel continually recasts the border as at once powerful yet facile, absurd yet lethal

Between the 1960s and the late 1980s, the Algerian film industry flourished in an anti-colonial environment, giving rise to a nation of politically aware film lovers. Since then, however, the film industry and archives in Algeria have suffered due to the political and economic situation. This short video work consists of several sequences of found footage from various militant films made in Algeria from the 1960s onwards. The archive material was edited for this show to create a new narrative. Some sequences are reminiscent of politically engaged action in this country that was one of the African nations where liberation movements flourished most freely. Other parts of the footage show traces of time as a result of the deterioration in the film’s chemical composition and emulsion, resulting in abstract images with granular textures.

English

mise-en-scène

A video projection made out of decaying found footage rushes.

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.

Don't Get Too Comfortable

More than fifty years after her paternal grandfather's death, Shaima Al-Tamimi shares a heartfelt multimedia letter addressed to him reflecting on her family's journey of migration and resettlement while examining the intergenerational burden of relocation that has and will continue to impacted Yemeni migrants and their descendants for decades to come.

Mona finds archival photographs of Arab women cross-dressing in the 1920s. Somewhere between her fantasies and her reality, she starts a feverish journey of uncovering lost histories and her own identity.

Neo Nahda

Mona finds archival photographs of Arab women cross-dressing in the 1920s.

A tattoo ritual and hookah session memorializes a pre-war flower shop. After seeing its storefront in archival footage of the Lebanese Civil War, a first-generation daughter seeks information and connection to place. Scenes of 1976 Beirut are paired with today’s modern landscape, while roses are etched and coconut coals burn in a snowy diasporic setting.

The Landmarks of Memory

A tattoo ritual and hookah session memorializes a pre-war florist, blending with archival footage as a way of reimagining the Lebanese Civil War.

This short film takes its title from Dante and Borges, as it considers how we see and understand the processes of war and occupation through archival footage of the Israeli military. Director Kamal Aljafari edits together scenes of the Israeli army conducting tests and strategies in the desert. The images feel at once like documentary footage and staged training in a remote and obscure location. Brilliantly spliced together scenes make military maneuvers comical, mundane, and surreal.

Paradiso, XXXI, 108

This short film takes its title from Dante and Borges, as it considers how we see and understand the processes of war and occupation through archival footage of the Israeli military.

United States of America

Archives and Secrets (Shorts Segment)

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Narrative Features

Documentary Features

Short Films

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TCAFF 2023 is a film festival celebrating independent Arab/SWANA cinema for audiences across the United States and in-person in Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN, striving to represent a diverse range of stories from the SWANA region and beyond.

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