Mizna's Twin Cities Arab Film Festival

As Mizna marks our 25th organizational anniversary, the 18th Twin Cities Arab Film Festival returns September 25-29, 2024 at the Main Cinema in Minneapolis with a closing day of special films, programs, and a reception at the Walker Art Center. Anchored by stories from Palestine and Sudan, the 2024 festival brings programming that responds to the catastrophic state faced by much of the SWANA region.

Schedule of Events:

11:00am: Brunch + Conversation: Creating Radical Spaces

At a time of extreme institutional suppression of Palestinian culture, and the criminalization of cultural resistance, it's clear that progressive artists must establish their own autonomous, radical cooperatives and spaces, free from censorship and co-option. Join this open discussion to share tactics on how we can establish and sustain such spaces, and what role they can play in the future cultural landscape of our communities.

Includes filmmakers Saeed Taji Farouk, Fatima Wardy, and Mohamed Kordofani, joined by members of the Body Watani and the Grief and Rage Circle for Palestine.

Venue: The Main Cinema, 115 SE Main St, Minneapolis, MN

1:00pm: Inshallah a Boy

After the sudden death of her husband, Nawal struggles to cope with the upheaval in her life. However, her pain is soon compounded by the possibility of losing her home to her brother-in-law. Desperate to keep her home and provide a stable life for her daughter, Nawal resorts to deception by faking a pregnancy. But as time passes, the lie becomes harder to sustain, and Nawal faces a difficult choice. With only three weeks to find a solution, Nawal embarks on a journey that challenges her fears, beliefs, and morality, as she fights to secure her rightful inheritance and protect her daughter's future.

3:30pm: Dreamworlds

Mizna's 18th Twin Cities Arab Film Festival closes with a pair of special screenings and a reception co-presented with the Walker Art Center.

"Filmmakers make the light. There is always poetry in images and images in poetry: imagination, desire, steadfastness, and liberation are entangled into material manifestations of scenes, vignettes, soundscapes, lightscapes, stillness, and rhythm."-Nasrin Himada

Guest curator Nasrin Himada imagines Palestinian and Indigenous artists' films and videos as proposals for possible worlds, made up of dreams, love for the land, and liberation. The program includes works by Kamal Aljafari, Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, NIC Kay, Rhayne Vermette, Sky Hopinka, Tacita Dean, and Tiffany Sia.

Following the screening, Himada and Anishinaabe-kwe curator Wanda Nanibush will discuss their values-grounded approach to working with artists and ideas of land rights, liberation, and Indigenous self-determination.

The Green Ray

A static and silent shot of a sunset off the western coast of Madagascar. Tacita Dean filmed the 'green ray', a legendary natural phenomenon that takes place when, in specific atmospheric circumstances, the last ray of sun passes over the horizon and becomes green

Lore

Images of friends and landscapes are cut, fragmented, and reassembled on an overhead projector as hands guide their shape and construction in this film stemming from Hollis Frampton's (nostalgia). The voice tells a story about a not-too-distant past, a not-too-distant ruin, with traces of nostalgia articulated in terms of lore.

Paradiso, XXXI, 108

This short film takes its title from Dante and Borges, as it considers how we see and understand the processes of war and occupation through archival footage of the Israeli military. Director Kamal Aljafari edits together scenes of the Israeli army conducting tests and strategies in the desert. The images feel at once like documentary footage and staged training in a remote and obscure location. Brilliantly spliced together scenes make military maneuvers comical, mundane, and surreal.

Black Rectangle

This film documents a tedious process of dismantling and reassembling 16 mm found footage. The film collage imitates functions of a curtain, while the recorded optical track describes the flm's subsequent destruction during its first projection.

wait, wait, wait (Renegade)

The #Renegade dance trend that took over social media in 2019 was based on a chopped and looped sound sample of the song "Lottery" by K Camp. The dance was initially choreographed and posted on Instagram by Jaliah Harmon, but it gained fame when White TikTok influencers co-opted and popularized it.

Only the Beloved Keeps Our Secrets

This film weaves together a fragmented script sampled from online recordings of everyday ritual and performance and everyday erasures. Collected over the last five years, mostly from Palestine, moments from this material appear as moving layers with images building in density on top of each other, obscuring what came before in an accumulation of constant testament and constant erasure.

What Rules the Invisible

This film upends archival travelogue footage shot in Hong Kong. Spanning reappropriated amateur footage across the 20th century, the sojourner's gaze-distanced, distorted and even voyeuristic-shows tropes and patterns. The same shots repeat across decades, from landscape to cityscape to street scenes. Sometimes the footage reveals more about the traveler himself.

5:30pm: Closing Night Reception

Mizna's 18th Twin Cities Arab Film Festival closes with a pair of special screenings and a reception co-presented with the Walker Art Center.

5:30pm - 7:00pm: Closing Reception + catering from Baba's

Closing reception will be held in the Bazinet lobby with catering from Baba's and a cash bar. Passholders will receive a complimentary drink ticket. Passholders will receive a code to reserve their tickets to the Sunday events at the Walker. Entry is included with your Closing Night film ticket.

7:00pm: Closing Night Film: Goodbye Julia + post-screening discussion with director Mohamed Kordofani.
7:00pm: Closing Night Film: Goodbye Julia + Post-screening Discussion

Mizna's 18th Twin Cities Arab Film Festival closes with a pair of special screenings and a reception co-presented with the Walker Art Center.

Closing reception will be held in the Bazinet lobby before the film with catering from Baba's and a cash bar. Passholders will receive a complimentary drink ticket. Passholders will receive a code to reserve their tickets to the Sunday events at the Walker.

Goodbye Julia

Wracked by guilt after causing and covering up the murder of a man from the South, Mona, a retired northern Sudanese singer tries to make amends by hiring the man's widow, Julia as a maid, and taking in Julia's son, Daniel. The guilt takes a toll on her relationships, increasing the tension in her marriage and leading Mona to question her social position and lifestyle. Unable to confess her transgressions to Julia or her husband, Mona attempts to adjust to a new status quo, unaware that the country's turmoil may find its way into her home and put her face-to-face with her sins. Set in Khartoum before the separation of South Sudan, Goodbye Julia tackles anti-Black racism and the social and class hierarchies that still impact Sudanese life in the North and South today.Venue: Walker Art Center, 725 Vineland Pl, Minneapolis, MN

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