💥PRESENTING: STRIKE SERIES💥

Programs in this series are arranged from films that have been withdrawn from film festivals in protest, with post-screening discussions geared toward organizing unambiguous strikes and actions which target film institutions and/or building immediate provisions for striking cultural workers, as well as new long term infrastructure outside of mainline film production & distribution.

Suggested donation tickets for STRIKE SERIES programs will go toward a fund for striking filmmakers and/or direct aid to Palestine. In this case it will go to Lina’s family fund to evacuate from Rafah to Egypt. We encourage other unmediated cinemas to circulate programs of withdrawn films as a way to support Palestinian liberation, people striking in solidarity, and their respective communities as they see fit.

PROGRAM I: COLLAPSING SPAN features 2 films withdrawn from IDFA 2023 by filmmakers Basma Al-Sharif and Jumana Manna. @basmalsharif @jumanamanna

Screening + Discussion + Zines (Next no Art)

Al-Sharif’s We Began By Measuring Distance embodies a disillusionment with the study and visualization of brutal occupation. Those in the film who conduct such surveys attempt to deepen their understanding of pain through measurement, only to find that, in the end, they “unfortunately had not rested at all.”

In Jumana Manna’s Blessed Blessed Oblivion, beefcake men painstakingly refine their bodies, maintain their beard & hairlines, and keep their cars polished & masked with fragrance. Despite their desperate verbal and bodily protestations to the contrary, the virile men’s hearts still tire. Perhaps, in the end, they also have not found rest.

Where al-Sharif’s film measures the distance between Gaza and Jerusalem, Manna takes us to East Jerusalem, particularly its gyms, car washes, and barbershops, or wherever her search for lofty performances of masculinity a la Scorpio Rising (a cited inspiration) takes her.

THURSDAY, MARCH 7TH
DOORS: 7PM
START: 7:30 PM

STONE CIRCLE THEATER
RIDGEWOOD, QUEENS

😷Masks Provided/Required