Design Unlearning Maps. Courtesy of Asian Movie Night 28 Nov 2026
14:00 - 18:00
Unlearning Maps: Each Small Candle Lights a Corner of the Dark
Join on 28 November for the second iteration of Unlearning Maps: Each Small Candle Lights a Corner of the Dark, presented in the context of the exhibition Life After Love – In Search of the Militant Image.
The afternoon starts by reading a text that helps ground the political approach, followed by two film screening blocks focussing respectively on Palestinian and Iranian perspectives. Afterwards, participants reflect on and document what was witnessed and learned. In dialogue with the exhibition Life After Love – In Search of the Militant Image, the programme hopes to foster an intergenerational and cross-context exchange starting from situated histories, the horizons of possibility they open up, and grounds for solidarity within the region and beyond.
When genocide and war are narrated as inevitable, the language of justice gets co-opted to justify imperial violence. This violence not only destroys lands and lives, but also narrows the political imagination, making other futures seem unattainable. Within these constraints, the histories of marginalised peoples, often entangled in these violent frameworks, must be held carefully in order to build other forms of relation and language that resist a return into imperial narratives. Solidarity, then, cannot be limited by choosing sides within the maps already given, or operate by flattening or universalising all struggles. It must begin from where different people stand, their histories, lands, wounds and limits of vision.
This gathering begins by listening not through detached sympathy, but as a way of disturbing inherited maps. Across different histories and struggles, other geographies of resistance may then become visible. The event stands in solidarity with communities across West Asia resisting genocide, settler colonialism, war and mass violence.
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Programme
14:00 Collective reading:
– Feminist Recalibration of a Magical Compass
– On the Difficulties of International Solidarity in Post-Jina Movement
– Shima Vezvaei
14:45 Screening block 1: Subversive films
15:25 Reflection on textile
16:00 Screening block 2: Siege Your Besiege with Madness
17:20 Reflection on textile
Fundraising
Across Palestine, Iran and beyond, communities continue to live through war, displacement, militarisation, censorship, economic violence, and the long afterlives of colonial and authoritarian projects. Yet even under these conditions, people continue to make worlds: through art, teaching, care, collective survival, memory, and resistance. The donations gathered through this programme travel to grassroots initiatives and communities whose struggles accompany this gathering.
Donation is not understood as charity detached from relation, but as a gesture of solidarity, however partial and insufficient – a way of refusing distance, and of remaining accountable to the lives, struggles, and futures that this gathering asks us to witness. Support and contributions become part of the passage between here and there, between those who listen, those who remember, and those who continue to endure and create under conditions designed to make life impossible.
Palestine, the Road to Tragedy
dir. Don Catchlove (from the Subversive Film Archive) / 1970 / UK / 21’ / Arabic with English subtitles
Commissioned by the Arab League, the director Don Catchlove repurposes the colonial British archives to explore the Palestinian question, starting from the British Mandate and followed by the Palestinian uprising against the mandate and the creeping Zionist settlement project. Although made by a British director, the film is considered one of the early attempts to decolonise the archives in relation to Palestine, presenting a narrative of resistance that comes from within the archive itself, countering the Western narrative about the events that led to the colonisation of Palestine.
Scenes from the Occupation in Gaza
dir. Moustafa Abuali (from the Subversive Film Archive) / 1973 / LB / 13’ / Arabic with English subtitles
A rare film by the legendary filmmaker Mustafa Abu Ali, one of the founders of the Palestine Film Unit, the first cinematic arm of the Palestinian revolution. Abu Ali edited this footage, originally shot by a French news crew, creating one of the earliest films about the occupied territories in the Gaze Strip. Scenes from the Occupation in Gaza uses experimental montage techniques to produce a film that is both cinematically and politically agitational. It was the only film produced by the Palestinian Cinema Group, which later became known as the Palestinian Cinema Institution in 1974.
Siege Your Besiege with Madness
dir. Sina Khanahmadi / 2024 / IR / 56’ / Arabic with English subtitles
The new generation of Arabs in Ahvaz, the capital of Iran’s oil-rich Khuzestan Province, is turning to rap music. Although Arabic rap has a short history in the city, a group called ‘Emad Records’ has been working to bring it in the spotlight. In Iran ethnic minorities are not allowed to study in their native languages. Despite lacking a formal education in their native languages, Arab rappers in Ahvaz strive to use poetry and perform rap in their own language to reflect on their experiences and the challenges they face.
Info & Credits
This event is held in English. Admission is free, pay what you can. Do you also think art should be free and accessible? Please consider supporting us with a donation when registering or by becoming a Framer Framed Friend.
For seated programmes, places are always made available for wheelchair users. Please speak to the host before the programme begins.This event may be photographed and filmed. Kindly let us know in advance if you prefer not to have your picture taken.
Location
Framer Framed
Oranje-Vrijstaatkade 71
1093 KS, Amsterdam
Framer Framed is supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science; Amsterdam Fund for the Arts; and Municipality of Amsterdam.
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