The Body Undone Q&A – “Let My Body Speak” & “No Crying at the Dinner Table”

The Body Undone: In Conversation with Loss is a programme of film screenings and discussions organised by Sana Rizvi for Oyoun's EMBODIED ARTS FESTIVAL. The selected films look at various kinds of loss held by different bodies - with a focus on storytelling from new voices. Using film, an embodied memory in itself, an invitation is made to reflect on the question: can we discover new possibilities in the workings of loss and grief by allowing spaces for these feelings to be held and acknowledged in an embodied way?

For this Q&A event, Sana Rizvi will be talking to Let My Body Speak director: Madonna Adib and No Crying at the Dinner Table director: Carol Nguyen. You are invited to join in the conversation. 

This event will take place on zoom, you can register here. Please note the zoom discussion will also be live-streamed on Oyoun's online platforms - Youtube, Vimeo and Facebook.

The films will be available for 24 hours starting at 14:00 on 17th April.

Contact us at hallo@oyoun.de to get sent the link and password to view this film. (This is limited to people in Germany) 

"Inspired by the poetry of Meena Kandasamy, the writings of Christina Crosby and Balbir Krishan’s art, I began my reflections on embodied memories connected to loss and grief. Their work helped me map new areas of inquiry and pose questions away from a more conventional outlook on the linear notions of loss’s predestined path, in a culture frantic for resolution. And instead, look at loss as holding social, political, and aesthetic implications for the body. A loss that doesn’t rely on linearity but that is profoundly intimate, from the deep space and time of the self. One that is birthed from the deepest parts of our bodies and times. Moreover, from this position of embodied knowing, could (re) engaging with loss generate sites for memory and history, rewriting of the past and reimagining the future? And could this engagement with loss: the irrecoverable, become, paradoxically, the condition of a new anti-colonial hope and agency." - Sana Rizvi

Let My Body Speak

Madonna Adib
10” | UK/ Lebanon | 2020 | Arabic with English subtitles

“'When I left Syria, my body became my only land. It is the only thing I own.”

This documentary is a personal and intimate journey exploring the repression experienced by the filmmaker during her childhood when she faced sexual control in a Damascus also experiencing a growing socio-political repression in the late 80s early 90s. Through the creative use of family archive in Damascus mixed with current footage of her body she reconstructs the pain of the past absorbed by her body.

Independent filmmaker and artist, Madonna Adib was born in Damascus, Syria, in 1986. She has received her B.A. in Fine Arts from the University of Damascus and went on to study Film Animation at Concordia University. She created experimental documentaries and experimental short drama films that were screened in film festivals and contemporary art museums across the world. She is one of the six founders and a photographer in the project Syrian Eyes of The World. She currently lives in Beirut, Lebanon.

Director: Madonna Adib
Production: Noe Mendelle for Scottish Documentary Institute
Cinematography: Elsy Hajjar
Editing: Sandra Fatte

No Crying at the Dinner Table

Carol Nguyen
2019 | Canada | 15 min | Vietnamese, English with English subtitles

Filmmaker Carol Nguyen interviews her own family to craft an emotionally complex and meticulously composed portrait of intergenerational trauma, grief, and secrets in this cathartic documentary about things left unsaid.

Carol Nguyen is a Vietnamese Canadian filmmaker based in Toronto and Montreal. Her films often explore the subjects of cultural identity, family and memory. Carol is a 2018 Sundance Ignite fellow, Adobe Creativity Scholar and a TIFF Share Her Journey ambassador, where she strives to empower diverse voices and women through her own stories and personal experiences in the film industry. Today, Carol is working towards developing her first documentary feature as well as an animated short.

Director: Carol Nguyen
Producers: Carol Nguyen, Aziz Zoromba (Concordia Film School)
Cinematographer: Walid Jabri
Editors: Carol Nguyen and Andrés Solis
Sound Design: Giulio Trejo-Martinez
Music Composer: Arie Van de Ven
Cast: Thao Nguyen-Duong, Ngoc Nguyen, Michelle Nguyen, Carol Nguyen

carolnguyenfilms.com/no-crying-at-the-dinner-table

This short film is also available online here.

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EMBODIED ARTS FESTIVAL

Curators, artists and cultural practitioners have been exploring identities, belonging and embodied memories through diasporic, decolonial and queer perspectives as part of Oyoun’s first curatorial focus: EMBODIED TEMPORALITIES. The outcomes, encounters and queries will be presented and celebrated during the EMBODIED ARTS FESTIVAL from 8th - 18th April. View all events here.