Beursschouwburg, Brussel

In Emmanuel Marre’s vérité film, not the filmmaker or his camcorder  dictate the mise-en-scène, but an alternating montage of Brussels-based parents styling their children’s hair with whatever they have at hand. Their direct but intimate instructions and the bathrooms, kitchens and living rooms that function as ephemeral hair salons sculpt the decor, rhythm, and imagery. 

Alice Diop is a French filmmaker of Senegalese descent. After studying colonial history, sociology, and film in Paris, she became an activist, championing gender and racial equality in film and the political mobilisation of young people from working-class neighbourhoods. With Vers la tendresse, she delves into the male territory of a Parisian suburb.

Marlon Riggs eagerly used then-new video technology, combining poetry, music, performance, and documentary to address racist stereotypes. Affirmations is a humorous confession about the desires and dreams of Black gay men, at once tender and political.

On the intersection between performance and film, Palestinian filmmaker Noor Abed’s work explores human relationships. For example, our songs were ready for all wars to come is an 8mm footage choreography of playing women whose stories are linked by communal mourning rituals.

This short video essay, created at the request of the Singapore Art Museum, explores how Palestinian gamers mimic life under colonial occupation in Los Santos as a virtual proxy of the state of Palestine. 

Now Pretend is an experimental investigation into using race as an arbitrary signifier. Drawing on language, personal memories, and the 1959 text “Black Like Me”, it deals with Lacan’s mirror stage, and the movement from object to subject. 

The footage in this rare film by legendary filmmaker Mustafa Abu Ali was shot by a French news team, after which Abu Ali edited it into one of the earliest films about the occupied territory in Gaza.

La briglia sul collo (1974) is a wonderful example of Cecilia Mangini's talent for pointed observation combined with humor and social criticism.