Les mains libres (Ennio Lorenzini, 1964), film still. Courtesy of Cineteca di Bologna.

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Programme 6:
Beyond the White Screen
CAM – Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, Estúdio
31.10.2024 | 18h30

Film:
Les mains libres (1964) by Ennio Lorenzini

Discussion:
Émilie Goudal, Zineb Sedira

Artworks, especially those that comprise documentary material, can offer a particular challenge to our sense of reality. While the indexical link to what they address grants images and sounds a specific credibility, the artist’s aesthetic, thematic and political choices and self-reflexive stance may generate a critical assessment of the very constitution of reality. At such point, art meets philosophy. To reflect on the relationship between the factual world and its subjective understanding, questioning hegemonic claims to objectivity and problematising the inherent contradictions of society are inherently philosophical issues.

The second edition of Problematising reality – Encounters between art and philosophy is a partnership between CAM – Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, IFILNOVA (CineLab) / FCSH / UNL and Maumaus / Lumiar Cité. This is a series of six discussion sessions and four seminars taking place at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, focusing on the moment when art and philosophy establish productive dialogues, proposing diverse approaches to contemporary thought. Each discussion session departs from a partial or full exhibition of works of art in the medium of film, accompanied by a reflection led by theorists, researchers or artists.

The last discussion session brings together academic Émilie Goudal and artist Zineb Sedira in a reflection prompted by the screening of Les mains libres (1964) by Ennio Lorenzini. Presumed lost almost from the date of its creation, this movie was the first feature film produced and footage by and from the independent country Algeria. Paving the way for other images to break the framing of the colonial gaze, it challenges us, in the past as much as in the present, to think of the power of representation as a battlefield, considering ‘cinema as a weapon’ of decolonisation, in order to map out other paths to emancipation with and against images.

The copy of the film being screened is the result of a restoration at the Cineteca di Bologna and was premiered at the Il Cinema Ritrovato festival (Italy, 2022).

Émilie Goudal is an art historian and junior professor at the Université de Lille. She holds the chair of "Emancipated Imaginaries", a research project that examines the historical and contemporary manifestations of emancipation, from Algeria to planetary echoes, in order to capture and define its contours, critical sources and contemporary cultural resonances. Her research interests lie in the interpenetrations between art, socio-history, politics and memorial issues, particularly in the context of decolonisation. She is the author of Des damné(e)s de l'Histoire – Les arts visuels face à la guerre d'Algérie (Les Presses du réel, 2019) and co-curator of the exhibition Ces voix qui m'assiègent... (Cité internationale des arts, Paris, 2024).

Zineb Sedira was born in France to an Algerian family and now lives between Paris and London. She has developed a sensitive practice addressing migration, storytelling and the bias of official histories. Her family story quickly became a fertile ground for artistic experiments. She also dug deep into archives, complexifying readily accepted historical narratives. Meanwhile, her practice has formally evolved from filmmaking and photography to also encompassing sculpture, installation and performance, where she stages herself on regular occasions. She is no longer the discreet listener or faceless performer; she steps back in time to invent new ones – fairer and more joyful versions – in which some of the wrongs of the past are finally given a place to heal.

Session duration: 135 min. | M/12 | Entry is free and limited to the number of seats available. Film spoken in French and subtitled in English and Portuguese; the discussion will be in English, with simultaneous translation to Portuguese.




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