Founded in April 1989 by Ibrahim Shaddad, Eltayeb Mahdi, and Suliman Elnour, just months before Omar Albashir’s military coup, the Sudanese Film Group (SFG) is a collective of filmmakers with a goal to maintain and develop Sudanese cinema. After returning from their film studies abroad, the members spread their love of cinema through film productions, mobile screenings, and publications. Producing over forty films, the group aspired for freedom of expression and the amplifying of local narratives. 

This two-part program includes a selection of the Sudanese Film Group’s experimental films using 35mm and 16mm reels, which were digitally restored by Arsenal Berlin in 2018, in an effort to preserve this part of cinematic history. The program also includes a more recent film by Eltayeb Mahdi that documents the Sudanese revolution in 2019. 

Highlights include Shaddad’s Al Habil (The Rope), an experimental 16mm film that follows two blind men and a donkey across a rocky desert into the unknown, Mahdi’s Al Dhareeh (The Tomb), a black and white 16mm short featuring a man who posits himself as a saint and fools a crowd of followers for personal gain, and Suleiman Elnour’s Wa Lakin Alardh Tadur (It Still Rotates) that offers a rare peek into the short lived People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (1967-1990) through interviews with locals as he documents a day at a children school created for bedouin communities.

Situating the significance of these films and the Sudanese Film Group within the present moment, the program features the documentary Sit-In by Eltayeb Mahdi on the recent Sudanese revolution in 2019 that toppled Al Bashir’s regime. The revolution and the film directly precede the current ongoing war in Sudan that forced the three filmmakers to flee to Cairo. Following the experimental and poetic spirit adopted by SFG, Sit-In offers an everyday look into the revolution focusing on artistic expressions and social solidarity, in addition to the political activism that took place during the time.

This program, curated by ArteEast's NNAAC fellow, Shayma Aziz, offers a remarkable look into the works of the SFG which has recorded decades of Sudanese society through the lenses of documentation, experimentation and surrealism. Sudan is ultimately portrayed as a place of complexities, humor and dreams.