The wind whistles through Jacques Madvo’s 1971 short film Blown by the Wind, a montage of vibrant drawings by Palestinian children, offering a window into their daily lives, memories, and imagination following their displacement to Lebanon after the Six-Day War in 1967. Palestine, the homeland etched into children’s memories, is rendered in colourful tones, set to the sweet sound of a folk musician singing. Juxtaposed, later in the film, with the harsh sounds of warfare and dark scribbles recording violence lived and remembered, these naïve images reflect children wise beyond their years.

Shifting perspectives from the visual to the aural, Whose Voice is This? by Dana Iskakova is a result of research into the Central Asian holdings of Arsenal’s archive. It explores the evolution of sound, speech, and music in local cinema from the 1960s to the 1990s. By listening to characters’ concerns through dubbed voices in addition to soundscapes and soundtracks, we can trace the impact of Soviet ideology, its gradual weakening, and the rise of Perestroika’s freedom. 

Throughout the summer of 2024, the airspace over Lebanon was shaken by the roar of Israeli military aircraft flying overhead. Based on audio data collected by the UN documenting Israel’s violations of the airspace of its neighboring independent state since 2006, Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s essay film The Diary of a Sky combines text, voice-over, and intricate soundscapes compiled from amateur audio and video recordings of drones, aircraft, and other military aircraft used by the Israeli army. Minimalist in structure but expansive in the scope of its themes, Diary draws parallels between the past and the present, also addressing the history of postwar Germany, the Israeli attack on Gaza in 2021, and the explosion at the Port of Beirut in August 2020.

Noor Abed’s film A Night We Held In Between centers around “Song for The Fighters,” which was found at the sonic archive of the Popular Art Center Palestine. Through the layers of the song, in a labyrinth of sounds and sites, the film conjures history as a permanent present tense, a collective and imaginative act. The film was shot in ancient sites in Palestine—caves, carved holes, underground passages, and wild valleys—the land becomes our main character. It traverses beyond the first layer of visibility to reveal a vast, hidden world similar to the one we know. Throughout the film, scenes intertwine rituals and narratives of community and resistance into everyday representations of social life in Palestine, thus emphasizing the role of collective rhythmic movement and the potential impact that shared feelings can evoke in creating and sustaining a community.

‍Intersection emerges from an immersive research process led by Rami Harrabi (VIRUS2020) — working on the creation of experimental wind instruments, Harrabi develops hybrid objects rooted in North African traditions. These instruments operate as carriers of cultural memory, yet remain open to transformation, distortion, and recontextualization. The video translates this research into a visual and sonic experience structured around the notion of intersection. It navigates multiple axes of tension and coexistence: between past and future, acoustic and electronic sound, tradition and innovation, life and death.

List of films:

Blown by the Wind (1971, Jacques Madvo)

Whose Voice Is This? (2025, Dana Iskakova)

The Diary of a Sky (2024, Lawrence Abu Hamdan)

A Night We Held In Between (2024, Noor Abed)

Intersection (2023, Rami Harrabi)