Róisín Tapponi
Founder of Habibi Collective
Reman Sadani
Artist and filmmaker
“Seeing the hard work happening on a grassroots level gives me a lot of hope. No one is waiting to be given access to the industry and I think the recent migration of screenings and artwork to the digital space presented many questions on the role of institutions and gatekeepers in the (industry). I found it interesting to see galleries holding screenings online to maintain some online presence during lockdown. I asked myself a lot whether we need these institutions at all. I believe no film is ever complete. They’re all experiments and many are invitations to remember and to take a look at the present and the future. So I hope that we come together in some form to have conversations and let the films evolve into new questions and possibilities.”
Habibi Collective is a digital archive, curatorial platform, podcast and movement that centres women’s filmmaking from south-west Asia and north Africa. As part of her guest-edit, Irish-Iraqi founder Róisín Tapponi leads an expansive conversation on where film is headed – and, importantly, how to ensure that the post-Covid shift actually transforms who is in control of what we watch.
The film industry is changing. And I’m not talking about the kind of films we are watching, but a tectonic shift within the workings of the industry itself. In 2020, Covid-19 uprooted an industry and moved it online: world-renowned festivals came to a halt, blockbuster productions stalled, and a business built on exclusivity tangibly lost its aura.
Those of us historically and culturally on the periphery were thrust into the spotlight, as film curators and programmers started screening works online that wouldn’t otherwise have been accessible. In some cases, this created a radical pedagogy of access – I co-directed the Independent Iraqi Film Festival (IIFF) and Queer MENA Film Festival, both of which would never have happened offline, for reasons that lay beyond the pandemic. This realisation underscored my latest project, Shasha, the first independent streaming service for Middle Eastern and north African cinema.
As voiced by cultural worker and writer Jemma Desai in our conversation: “abolition, not reform”. Not only do the old ways of doing things seem stale, they simply don’t work any more. Many of us are bored of institutional critique and tepid diversity policies: what’s next is a focus on carving our own independent spaces. Another view comes from Sophie Cavoulacos, assistant film curator at MoMA, who still believes in the power of the institution to enact meaningful change. If this pandemic has shown us anything, it’s how to slow down. With care comes sustainability, and a path towards building an online presence which has longevity when our cinemas finally reopen. Butheina Kazim runs Dubai’s Cinema Akil, the only arthouse cinema in the Gulf region. She is already welcoming back cinemagoers, albeit at half capacity due to social distancing measures. While everyone in
