Collectives within Collectives Carte Blanche to Bouchra Khalili
«In a film when someone speaks, who speaks?», is a recurring question in Khalili’s words and oeuvre. In a recent conversation with writer and curator Omar Berrada, Khalili goes further in her meditation on filmmaking in relation to questions of representation of members of communities rendered invisible by the nation-state model: «Could it be that cinema is per excellence the art of community?»
On the occasion of her exhibition Bouchra Khalili. Between Circles and Constellations, the artist has selected films and videos responding to some her most recent projects: The Circle (2023), The Magic Lantern (2019–22), Twenty-Two Hours (2018) and The Tempest Society (2017).
In this selection of moving-image works, she brings together pioneers of cinema of immigration in France, allies using their cameras to support immigrants’ struggles for equal rights, feminism and internationalism. What all of those filmic works have in common is to have been overshadowed by official film and video historiography. Also, they all emphasise a key practice of Khalili’s method: resurrecting the ‘unarchived’. Throughout this film and video programme, Khalili invites us on a journey throughout the forgotten legacy of the Movement of Arab Workers (MTA) and its theatre groups in France during the 1970s, which unfolds through fiction in Les Ambassadeurs by Naceur Ktari and documentary traces that have mostly been created collectively by pioneers of video-making and militant 16mm and super 8mm cinema as produced by Cinélutte, Vidéo 00, Colletif Mohamed or Weekend à Nanterre – the two latter offering among the first cinematic gestures of self-representation of migrant youth in France.
This filmic journey concludes with Carole Roussopoulos – one of what Khalili herself calls «recurring ghosts» in her work –, a pioneer of video art and activism who filmed movements for social justice, workers’ and feminist resistance struggles.
Participant
Bouchra Khalili
Programme
Taking the Camera
We open this film cycle with the films Zone immigrée by the Collectif Mohamed and Weekend à Nanterre by the Collectif Weekend à Nanterre. Introduction by the artist Bouchra Khalili.
Filmic traces of the Movement of Arab Workers
Second session of the film programme with the documentary essay of Daniel Julien Mohamed, La Grève des ouvriers de Margoline and Jusqu'au bout films by the Collectif Cinélutte and Des travailleurs émigrés racontent by the Collectif Vidéo 00. With the participation of Bouchra Khalili and Richard Copans, member of the Collectif Cinélutte.
Fiction on the Movement of Arab Workers
Les Ambassadeurs by Naceur Ktari is going to be the film of this third session of Carte Blanche, followed by a talk between the director of the movie, Léa Morin and Bouchra Khalili.
Carole Roussopoulos
We close the film program with three films by Carole Roussopoulos: Genet parle d'Angela Davis, Young Lord and Les Mères espagnoles. With Bouchra Khalili and Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez.
Introductions in French with simultaneous translation. If you have any question, feel free to contact us on 93 481 33 68 or by email at macba [at] macba [dot] cat.
