A screening program curated by Rahma El Haddad. The selected films interweave material from various sources, creating interchangeable conversations between past and present, text and image, meaning and its absence. These works engage with concepts of the archive and critical fabulation, combining historical or literary texts with manipulated archival footage. Through recontextualization and montage, they imagine alternate, impossible realities that suggest new possible lives for the archival material by removing it from its original context and assigning it new meanings, challenging the notion of historical inevitability.
All works were sourced from the archive of Medrar’s Cairo Video Festival, active since 2005 and including submissions from around the world.
The screening is followed by a discussion with Ahmed Refaat.
The screening will take place on Tuesday, August 26, 2025 at 7 PM
A screening program curated by KINO CAIRO in collaboration with Medrar, hosted by Underground Social as part of the Cairo Video Festival Archive (Screening Program). It features a selection of short-form video and film works that offer experimental and poetic perspectives on how we exist in this strange twenty-first century.
Watching these films, we reflect on the spaces and communities we inhabit: the relentless pursuit of modernity regardless of its long-term cultural, societal, psychological, and environmental consequences; the twin human urge to tame nature and seek solace in its harmony, to bend the planet to our will and escape the monsters we have made.
The selected works were all shot on cellulod, mostly 8mm and 16mm, giving a visceral and often gritty edge to their existential exploration.
All works were sourced from the archive of Medrar’s Cairo Video Festival, active since 2005 and including submissions from around the world.
The screening will take place on Tuesday, July 29, 2025 at 8 PM, and attendance can be registered along with location details via the LINK with an entry fee of 50 EGP.
