cineclub

The film club is a monthly gathering where we will present a carefully curated selection of films. Each session will include the screening and vegetarian snacks prepared by a guest artist, inspired by the film being shown. In this session, we will watch The Retreat, Men of my Dreams, and Keep the Mountain at a Bay by Gelare Khoshgozaran.

Wednesday, November 26

20h

The Retreat by Gelare Khoshgozaran | 2023 | 22 min

As a process based film, The Retreat delves into the temporal, spatial and relational effects migratory movements have on the body and mind of the exile. The film was produced through a discursive and community-oriented process, central to which was an ‘exile retreat’ organized by the artist, with participants recruited through an international open call. The film interweaves recorded fragments from the retreat with dream-like scenes which explore the connections between exile, desire and antifascism. The international group of participants and collaborators convened for the week-long retreat in Monistrol-d'Allier in the south of France to collectively reflect on the relation between mental health and the experience of exile or seeking asylum. One of the main historical and political reference points for both the exile retreat and the film was the history of the nearby psychiatric hospital (asylum) in Saint-Alban-sur-Limagnole, Lozère and the radical legacies of Catalan psychiatrist Francesc Tosquelles, to consider exile as a space for transnational solidarity.

Men of my Dreams by Gelare Khoshgozaran | 2020 | 9 min

Men of my dreams displays a series of vignettes that play with the boundary between reality and fiction. By considering this past as something materially present in the fragments of knowledge that the body carries with it, Men of my dreams delves into Gelare's personal history, invoking a group of men who surrounded her with their writings, songs, films, and activism as she grew up in Tehran and moved to the United States. Among them are: writers Edward Said and Roberto Bolaño; poet Federico García Lorca; filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini; singer Farhad Mehrad; Iranian journalist and poet Khosrow Golesorkhi; and also Saeed, her father.

Keep the Mountain at a Bay by Gelare Khoshgozaran | 2023 | 9 min

An homage to Etel Adnan (1925-2021) the film invokes a queer and ghostly presence through the recitation of Adnan’s poetry in Sausalito, CA where she lived for decades, teaching and writing some of her pivotal work, such as Journey to Mount Tamalpais (1986).

Footage shot in California and Caucasus Mountains is overlaid with the poetry of Nima Yooshij, June Jordan, Etel Adnan, and contemporary artist Emilia Yang, to map exile as a space of collective difference and transnational solidarity. Against the passivity of nostalgia and the impossibility of assimilation it is the figure of ‘stranger’ (June Jordan) that keeps the surging waves of displacement alive.

21:30h

Snacks & drinks by Elena Maravillas

bios

Gelare Khoshgozaran. Born in Tehran in 1986, Khoshgozaran produces works that address the legacy of imperial violence. Through film and video, Khoshgozaran explores narratives of belonging outside of geographies and temporalities that destabilize the sense of home and render places of affinity uninhabitable.

Elena Maravillas is a multidisciplinary artist. She is interested in how we relate to and inhabit the world, in ecology, care and interspecies communication.

Activity coordinated by Catarina Botelho, Carlos Vásquez, Marla Jacarilla, Valentina Alvarado Matos and Elena Maravillas. 

If you have any needs or questions regarding the accessibility of this activity, please visit our page on "access to La Escocesa" by clicking here.