11/12/2025
Short Film Day, 21 December, 16:00-18:30
Films by Dana Dawud, Francois Knoetze, Hayat Laban and Zein Majali
Co-hosted with Qu**rs for Palestine Malmö
In conjunction with Kortfilmsdagen (Short film day), we present an evening of screenings together with a fundraiser for Gaza. The program investigates image-making as a tool for both testimony and violence, particularly in the context of Palestinian struggles and resistance. By focusing on how the internet is used simultaneously to connect and exploit, the films examine the role of cyberspace and technology in war, oppression and extractivism.
The program spans a variety of genres, including a documentary about photojournalist Mahfouz Abu Turk and a sci-fi horror movie inspired by the writings of Joseph Tonda. It also showcases satirical shorts and videoworks that fuse archive material and social media footage.
Curated by Hugo Chang Coffey
**Films in the Program**
God shaped hole
Zein Majali, 0:40 min and 1:04 min, 2024
This film is a series of Al-generated videos in response to the ongoing war in Gaza and the proliferation of depictions of violence on social media timelines. It engages with certain unforeseen patterns and contradictions emerging out of witnessing this tension at a handheld distance.
Palcorecore
Dana Dawud, 5:35 min, Internet footage from Palestine, 2023
Palcorecore (Palestine) is a hypnotic fusion of dance, archival footage, and internet-circulated videos that collapse past and present into a visceral portrait of Palestinian life. Opening with The Lovers Songs Band and excerpts from Jenin, Jenin (2003), the film assembles fleeting yet powerful images: flag-waving horseback riders, families at the beach, teenagers dancing in flames, and acts of resistance against occupation. Dawud’s deadpan narration—“I witness you witness me, we are martyrs together”—pulls the viewer into a shared act of witnessing. Through rhythmic disorder and movement, the film captures the resilience, rebellion, and everyday joys of Palestinian existence, focusing particularly on youth and women in their defiant assertion of life.
Shattered Memory
Hayat Laban, 14:49, Palestine, 2024
Short documentary about photojournalist Mahfouz Abu Turk, his memories and his archives. With his camera, Abu Turk was one of the few to document first-hand the events in the city of Jerusalem and the West Bank from the first Intifada in 1987 until the end of the nineties, putting his body on the frontline.
Core Dump: Kinshasa
Francois Knoetze, 12:40 min, Congo, 2018
This is a series of 4 films, Kinshasa (2018), Shenzhen (2019), New York (2019) and Dakar (2018) and explores the relationship between digital technology, cybernetics, colonialism and the reenchanted notion of a Non-Aligned Humanist Utopia Inspired by the writing of Joseph Tonda, Core Dump: Kinshasa situates popular Congolese mythology in the contemporary digital imagination. The film unfolds as an Afro-dystopian-sci-fi-horror that investigates the West’s notions of techno-utopias and the former colonies that are mined and dumped on to create these shimmering oases.
I love it when the images: the images wash over me
Zein Majali, 2:34 min, 2022
“this work is about being terminally online / this work is about the collapse of war, s*x and selfies into one plane / this work is about memes and cute animal videos / this work is about the idf / this work is about divinity and depravity / this work is about seeking god in the network”
Images: God Shaped Hole, Zein Majali; Shattered Memory, Hayat Laban
