21 December, 16:00-18:30
Films by Dana Dawud, Francois Knoetze, Hayat Laban and Zein Majali 

Co-hosted with Queers for Palestine Malmö

In conjunction with Kortfilmsdagen (Short film day), Skånes konstförening presents 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

Free entrance.
Light food and drinks will be served.
Donations to Palestinagruppernas emergency fundraising for Gaza are encouraged. 

Program
Doors open 16:00
Film screenings 16:30-17:30
Closing 18:30 

Before and after the event, you can view our current exhibition: Reading James Baldwin.

Films in the Program

God shaped hole
Zein Majali, 0:40 min and 1:04 min, 2024
God Shaped Hole 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
A short documentary about the 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
Core Dump is a series of 4 films, Kinshasa (2018), Shenzhen (2019), New York (2019) and Dakar (2018). The project 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, sex 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”

About the filmmakers

Zein Majali is a Jordanian-Palestinian sound and visual artist whose work explores the collision of technology with a rapidly evolving political landscape, with an interest in a post-colonial and globalised Middle East. Her work examines sense-making in the wake of narrative collapse, brought on by the disorienting effects of digital life. Her recent audio visual performance work has been presented at the V&A, Somerset House, and the ICA.

Dana Dawud is an artist and writer whose practice navigates film, montage, and sound design. Engaging with the fluidity of internet cinema, her work expands across online and offline spaces, tracing the ruptures and reverberations of culture. Dawud is the founder of Open Secret (2024–present), an off-site touring screening series featuring emerging and post-net artists, and Pleasurehelmet (2020–present), a sound project archiving experimental pieces and niche internet cultures. Dawud’s Monad (2024–ongoing) is a film series in perpetual flux, unfolding through mutation and accumulation. Neither fixed nor final, each iteration of Monad reconfigures itself with every screening, layering past, present, and future into a shifting cinematic form. 

Hayat Laban is an independent filmmaker native to Jerusalem, Palestine. Hayat’s works look into the archives and the societal memory of the city of Jerusalem, addressing the themes of art, theatre, image and memory, as well as what the Jerusalemite and Palestinian people are exposed to due to the occupation.

Francois Knoetze is a scavenger, sculptor, performer, and video artist with an interest in the connections between social histories and material culture. His videos create narrative portraits of the uncertainty in the nervous system of a global digital machine at the brink of collapse. Knoetze is a co-founder of the Lo-Def Film Factory. Based in South Africa, the collective’s work involves archival research, dramaturgy and visual strategies associated with video art, collage, sculptural installation and Virtual Reality, to explore and create space for collaborative, experimental community storytelling. 

Image from Palcorecore, Dana Dawud, 2023