Mizna Film Series Spring 2021: Surveillance
The Mizna Film Series is a monthly selection of programs, marking our first venture into year-round curated film programming. While our annual Film Fest focuses primarily on the works of contemporary artists, the Mizna Film Series provides a space to expand our regular film programming to include screenings, critical essays, filmmaker interviews, and discussions exploring revolutionary forms of cinema from the SWANA region and beyond. This series is presented virtually and in-person in collaboration with Trylon Cinema. Learn more about the Mizna Film Series here.
The spring season of Mizna’s Film Series is focused around a theme of surveillance. The film selections depict, critique, and engage with the impacts and meaning of surveillance technologies––those we know about, those we only think we know about, and those we willingly participate in every time we pick up our devices, or indeed, move through the world. Acknowledging the realities of corporate and governmental forms of surveillance, violence, and control, these films also explore the banality of the modern surveillance state and our complicity within it.
We kick off our spring season in March with An Unusual Summer (2020) by Kamal Aljafari. The spring segment continues in April with Al Asleyeen (2017) by Marwan Hamed and in May with Empty Metal (2018) by Bayley Sweitzer and Adam Khalil.
Tickets + Passes
In-person tickets: $10
Virtual Tickets: $8
Virtual Pass (3-pack) : $20
Discounted virtual ticket options are available for students, seniors, or low income audience members at $5 per ticket. Please use the following codes to purchase discounted tickets.
Students: SPRING1
Seniors: SPRING2
Low income: SPRING3
PAST
March 24–28, 2021
An Unusual Summer by Kamal Aljafari
Mizna presents our March program in collaboration with The Mosaic Rooms as part of programming affiliated with When I see the future, I close my eyes, Heba Y. Amin’s first UK solo exhibition. Curated by Anthony Downey, Amin’s exhibition showcases the latest iterations of three bodies of work by her: Project Speak2Tweet, The General’s Stork and Operation Sunken Sea. Amin investigates how politics and events in the Middle East relate to global concerns, challenging colonial narratives of conquest and control, while also exploring the totalitarian exploitation of technology and emerging forms of digital authoritarianism.
Following an act of vandalism, the Palestinian filmmaker’s father decides to install a surveillance camera to record the scenes unfolding in front of the house. Through everyday family life, or neighbors going to work, An Unusual Summer (2020) captures fleeting moments of poetry while in the background, the daily choreography of El Ramle under Israeli occupation comes to the surface.
In collaboration with The Mosaic Rooms, we are pleased to make An Unusual Summer available virtually FOR FREE March 25–28, 2021. Capacity is limited to 200 tickets** (limit one ticket per person).
**Pass-holders get a bonus film! Passes will not be redeemable for this virtual screening. In order to watch the film, pass-holders must reserve an individual ticket for An Unusual Summer.
In-person screening of An Unusual Summer takes place at the Trylon Cinema on Wednesday, March 24, 2021 at 7pm (Tickets $10).
March Programming
In addition to the screening, Mizna and The Mosaic Rooms will partner in presenting a critical essay on An Unusual Summer by artist and writer Lamia Abukhadra, and a discussion between filmmaker Kamal Aljafari and writer and critic Kareem Estefan.
Watch the virtual discussion between Kamal Aljafari and Kareem Estefan which was presented by Mizna and The Mosaic Rooms on March 27, 2021.
About The Mosaic Rooms
The Mosaic Rooms are a non-profit art gallery and bookshop dedicated to supporting and promoting contemporary culture from the Arab world and beyond in London, UK. They do this through free contemporary art exhibitions, multidisciplinary events including film screenings, current affairs talks and book launches, and learning and engagement program.
April 28–May 2, 2021
Al Asleyeen / by Marwan Hamed
Samir Eliwa is the head of a small family, an employee in a bank for years, but he suddenly gets fired after a decision to reduce labor. During his search for a new job he discovers that his bank account is mysteriously depleted. Al Asleyeen (dir. Marwan Hamed, 2017) shows a darker side of Egyptian society when a few days after being fired, Samir opens finds a box with a cell-phone in it and a note instructing him to use his fingerprint to open it. He watches a mysterious video about his past, before he receives a phone call that changes his life forever.
Al Asleyeen is available virtually April 29–May 2, 2021.
In-person screening of Al Alseyeen takes place at Trylon Cinema on Wednesday, April 28, 2021 at 7pm.
April Programming
In addition to the April screening of Al Aslyeen, Hazem Fahmy writes an essay on the sociopolitical implications present within the film.
Read Al Asleyeen by Hazem Fahmy
May 26–30, 2021
Empty Metal / by Bayley Sweitzer, Adam Khalil
A punk band is ensnared in a murder plot by an indigenous family whose mother communicates telepathically with her meditation companions, a Rastafarian hacker and a Buddhist. While this motley crew goes about their business, the drones fly overhead, seeing all.
Empty Metal (dir. Bayley Sweitzer, Adam Khalil, 2018) reveals a political fantasy, an alternative reality whose characters teeter on the dull knife edge that is contemporary American politics, but they refuse to fall right or left. Instead, they lash out from the soul, and under the radar, in an attempt to achieve what their mainstream predecessors have yet to accomplish.
Empty Metal is available virtually May 27–30, 2021.
In-person screening of Empty Metal takes place at Trylon Cinema on Wednesday, May 26, 2021 at 7pm.
May Programming
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