A night of Syrian embodied resistance, featuring four militant and expanded cinema films of the wujoud وجود  collective. Hosted in collaboration with Mario Hamad – British-lebanese filmmaker, academic and scholar-practitioner in militant cinema and activist film. 

 

By 2015, the majority of the world’s refugees were Syrian — the largest refugee exodus since the second world war.  Yet with this migration of people, there also followed the migration of the narrative component of genocide.  Labelled as invaders, potential terrorists or rapists; their status as human beings obscured and erased by a xenophobic mass media scape fuelled by pro-Assad and pro-Putin disinformation outlets that found receptive audiences that spanned the range of political demographics from the far Right to the authoritarian Left.  The histories of the Syrian democrat; the Syrian civil activist; the human rights defender; an indigenous uprising of national liberation — all of these histories were cast into doubt and often absented from political discourse surrounding the Syrian war.  A population whose attempts to speak for themselves rendered them vulnerable to acts of verbal, psychological and physical hostility — testimony to the relative success of the Assad regime’s ability to disseminate and sway public opinion in line with its own narrative.  

 

The films of Wujoud Collective are activated in this context.  Often manifested through intermedial processes and exhibited in specific spatial environments, the films of Wujoud Collective intervene in this landscape of imposed invisibility and erasure.  

 

Situated at the intersection of a militant and expanded film practice, the audiovisual works of Wujoud Collective were conceived as forms of resistance against the narrative component of the now deposed Assad regime’s campaign of genocide (March 2011-December 2024).  These are films that induce their audience to experience levels of a visceral, embodied awareness, via strategies that range from the intimate, to the unsettling, to the participatory.  

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Underpinning this series is the concept wujoud  وجود — the Arabic word for presence/existence/being.  Wujoud takes on an inherently political significance in the context of genocide.  It emerges as a praxis and ethos of resistance embodied in the very being of a Syrian opposition.  Wujoud, in these films, is enacted by the co-authored presence of Syrian civil activists, as well as by the audience (or experiencer’s) engagement with these very individuals.

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Film programme

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statues | 3min

Syrian activists protest outside the Russian consulate in London.

 

A Reasonable Argument

An incongruity of views on Syria expressed simultaneously. Featuring political rhetoric, dehumanisation, protest and genocide.

 

The Propagandist | 26min

An essay film scrutinising a press conference by the Assad regime's permanent mission at the UN.

 

Testimony of a Former Detainee | 8min

A former political prisoner narrates his experiences in the Assad regime's prison system.  Includes torture footage.​​​​