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07 November 2008

In collaboration with Interface, a research centre in the University of Ulster School of Art and Design, QFT will present two days of screenings and talks by international filmmakers which will address the themes of memory, place and conflict that are central to our society emerging out of conflict.

Art, Media and Contested Space will take place at QFT from Saturday 8 to Sunday 9 November and will include screenings and talks from Northern Ireland, Chile, Israel and Palestine. 

There will also be an associated exhibition by Cahal McLaughlin at the Naughton Gallery, featuring the video testimonies of three ex-occupants of the Maze and Long Kesh prison - a loyalist, a republican and a prison officer - which follow the participants as they retrace their steps in the now mostly demolished prison.

Launching the Art,Media and Contested Space film season, Cahal McLaughlin said:

"Given the interest in attempts to understand our contested past, evidenced by films such as Hunger, this is an attempt to link local perspectives with international works that have addressed the representation of conflict. We are privileged to have such filmmakers attend the screenings and discuss their work".

The series will open on Saturday 8 November with a screening of Margo Harkin's Bloody Sunday: A Derry Diary, which follows the search for truth by the families of the thirteen civilians who were killed on a civil rights march in Derry on 30 January 1972.

Also screening on Saturday 8 November is Calle Santa Fe, an intensely personal project documenting Carmen Castillo's recent return to Chile, which she fled while pregnant in 1974 after her husband, leader of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), was killed in a gunfight at their house on the titular street.

In a deliberately slow moving film, the director meets up with former friends, neighbours and colleagues in an attempt to come to terms with the nature of loss, memory and exile.  Both the director and Margo Harkin will attend a public talk after the screening.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is examined in two very different screenings on Sunday 9 November.  Made by Simone Bitton, who is both a Jew and an Arab, Wall (Mur) follows the separation fence that is imprisoning one people and enclosing the other.  Women Beyond Borders is a documentary looking at the lives and works of some of the women who have joined in the fight for their Palestinian homeland, whether by becoming activists or freedom fighters. Directors Simone Bitton and Jean Khalil Chamoun (Wall) will take part in a panel discussion at the end of the screenings.

For further information visit http://interface.rehabstudio.co.uk or contact Anthony Haughey, email a.haughey@ulster.ac.uk

For further information and booking for all Queens's Film Theatre film events, please visit www.queensfilmtheatre.com or drop into QFT at 20 University Square.