True or False
Encounters between art and philosophy
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Date
- / Cancelled / Sold out
Location
Auditorium 2 Calouste Gulbenkian FoundationThe film is in Persian, with subtitles in Portuguese and English.
The discussion will be in English, with simultaneous interpretation to Portuguese.
Pricing
- Free entry
In 1995, in connection with the celebrations of cinema’s centenary, Makhmalbaf, a leading figure in the new wave of Iranian cinema, decided to make a film, placing an ad in the press to hire a hundred actors and actresses. Around 5,000 people turn up for the auditions, which led to riots and various accidents and mishaps.
During the auditions, candidates expressed their love of cinema while commenting on the concerns, ambitions, and contradictions that govern their daily lives, such as women made invisible by political power.
Ultimately, this eulogy to cinema, which premièred internationally at the Cannes Film Festival in 1995, straddles the fine line between fiction and documentary to reveal the potential of film as a means of communicating and revealing silenced realities, particularly in societies where freedom of expression is restricted.
To talk about the themes evoked by the film, we invited Jihan El Tahrit, who has worked on the identities of the modern African and Arab worlds, and Esther Leslie, whose research has explored art’s response to liberating revolutionary situations and its instrumentalisation by authoritarian regimes.
Speakers
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Esther Leslie
Esther Leslie (UK) is Professor of Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck, University of London. Her research has focused on Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Siegfried Kracauer, Nazi cinema and photography and Stalinist Socialist Realism. Her books include The Rise and Fall of Imperial Chemical Industries: Synthetics, Sensism and the Environment (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) and Dissonant Waves: Ernst Schoen and Experimental Sound in the Twentieth Century (with Sam Dolbear, Goldsmiths Press, 2023).
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Jihan El Tahri
Jihan El Tahri (Egypt/France) is a filmmaker, visual artist, writer and producer. Her work has been presented in museums, biennials and other spaces, including: Dak’Art (Dakar), Bamako Encounters, Centre Pompidou (Paris) and HKW-Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin). Her award-winning documentaries include Nasser (2015, premiered in the official selection of TIFF – Toronto International Film Festival), Behind the Rainbow (2008), Cuba, an African Odyssey (2007) and House of Saud (2004, nominated for an Emmy).
Programme
18:30 / Welcome
18:35 / Introduction
18:45 / Screening of «Salam Cinema», by Mohsen Makhmalbaf (75’)
20:00 / Discussion
20:45 / Q&A
21:00 / Closing
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