MA Forum in collaboration with LIO: Subversive Film

Join us for the MA Forum ‘The Politics of Memory, Navigating Institutional and Personal Archives’ with Mohanad Yaqubi (Subversive Film), where we delve into the intersection of archival work and artistic research. This session will examine how the processes of collecting, organizing, and narrating archives are inherently political acts. Through this exploration, we will uncover the complexities and transformative potential of archival practices, highlighting their ability to reflect or challenge dominant historical narratives.

Our guest for this session is filmmaker Mohanad Yaqubi, part of the Brussels and Ramallah based collective Subversive Film. Working at the intersection of film making, programming and archival practice Subversive Film aim to cast new light upon historic works related to Palestine. In the session Yaqubi will introduce a new contribution to L’Internationale Online. Showing excerpts from several titles from the Palestine cinema anthology, the session is approached as an act of interruption in colonial and post-colonial contexts, a move to resist history writing, and as a way to explore the possibilities of archiving in times of genocide.


Subversive Film is a cinema research and production collective that aims to cast new light upon historic works related to Palestine and the region, to engender support for film preservation, and to investigate archival practices. Their long-term and ongoing projects explore this cine-historic field including digitally reissuing previously overlooked films, curating rare filmscreening cycles, subtitling rediscovered films, producing publications, and devising other forms of interventions. Formed in 2011, Subversive Film is based between Ramallah and Brussels. Their project Tokyo Reels was presented at documenta 15.

Still from Welcome to Jordan (1964, dir. Tom Hollyman). Image capture by Subversive Film

MA Forum is a seminar series on artistic research, hosted by HDK-Valand in collaboration with L’Internationale Online. Through invited guests, the series explores different dimensions of artistic research. The lectures are free and open to all.

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