Join us for a screening of Off Frame AKA Revolution Until Victory, 62 min, Color & B&W, digital, Arabic, English, French, and Italian with English subtitles; Palestine, France, Qatar, Lebanon, 2016, by Mohanad Yaqubi.
This film is being screened as part of the education programme in parallel with La Grande Illusion, a solo exhibition of work by artist Brian Maguire.
This screening is programmed and presented by artist and filmmaker Helena Gouveia Monteiro, who will moderate a post-screening conversation. Free, booking on Eventbrite or come on the day subject to availability.
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Off Frame AKA Revolution Until Victory is a meditation on the Palestinian people’s struggle to produce an image and self-representation on their own terms in the 1960s and 1970s, with the establishment of the Palestine Film Unit as part of the PLO. Unearthing films stored in archives across the world after an unprecedented research and access, the film begins with popular representations of modern Palestine and traces the works of militant filmmakers in reclaiming image and narrative through revolutionary and militant cinema. In resurrecting a forgotten memory of struggle, Off Frame reanimates what is within the frame, but also weaves a critical reflection by looking for what is outside it, or what is off frame. The Palestinian revolution collaborated with filmmakers, actors and activists from Syria, Italy, UK, Lebanon, France, Germany, Argentina amongst many others, and made partnerships with institutions in Berlin, Moscow, Baghdad and Cuba. Despite their prolific output, very few of their works remain. Yet there is much to learn from revisiting this era and piecing together the narrative of Palestinian militant cinema. “Off Frame” aims to fill this gap in the collective memory, making the past an urgent element of the present day analysis of Palestinian cinema. The film attempts to bring forth all that was happening behind the cameras and the creation of these films.
Resorting to cinema’s temporal nature and time being an elastic concept, “Off Frame” assumes the role of a time machine, transporting the audience back in time, by opening a portal into the life, hopes and desires of a people living in a revolution, fighting to be recognised and to reclaim control over their representation.
Mohanad Yaqubi is a filmmaker, producer, and one of the founders of the Ramallah-based production house, Idioms Film. Yaqubi is also one of the founders of the research and curatorial collective Subversive Films focusing on militant film practices, and a founding member of the Palestine Film Institute. He has been a resident researcher at The Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK) in Gent, Belgium since 2017. Yaqubi’s filmography as a producer includes the documentary feature Infiltrators (dir. Khaled Jarrar, 2013), Suspended Time (Several directors, 2013) the narrative short Pink Bullet (dir. Ramzi Hazboun, 2014), he co-produced several films including the narrative feature Habibi (dir. Susan Youssef, 2010), the short narrative Though I Know the River is Dry (dir. Omar R. Hamilton, 2012), and the feature documentaries Ambulance (dir. Mohammed Jabaly, 2016) and Ouroboros (dir. Basma Sharif, 2017).
His first feature film Off Frame AKA Revolution Until Victory premiered at TIFF, Berlinale, cinema du reel, Dubai IFF, and Yamagata among 50 other screenings around the world. With R21 AKA Restoring Solidarity (2022) Mohanad Yaqubi recovers a set of 21 16mm reels of militant palestinian films (https://www.tokyoreels.com/) which were dubbed and screened in Japan and then lost for over 30 years, offering an eclectic and inspiring survey of cross-continental solidarity.
Free, book or come on the day subject to availability.
Film still: Mohanad Yaqubi, 2016
