Film

Seemab Gul’s Ghost School is an outstanding debut feature

With gorgeous cinematography and keen direction from director Seemab Gul’s debut feature, Ghost School shows remarkable strength and film-making talent. The Urdu-language feature, which premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival this week, follows the journey of 10-year old Rabia (an outstanding performance from child actress Nazualiya Arsalan) who undertakes the journey of uncovering the mystery behind “ghost school” phenomenon in Pakistan after her school is abruptly shut down. The exploration takes place through the pure and curious lens of a young girl who above-all wants to go back to school. Ghost schools are institutions that exist on paper, or…

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London Film Screening Marks the 35th Anniversary of Mohawk Kanehsatà:ke Resistance

On July 11, 1990, a 78-day standoff began when the Mohawk of Kanehsatà:ke resisted the violent expansion of a golf course onto their sacred forest and ancestral burial grounds. Commonly called the “Oka crisis” in settler communities, the siege by Sûreté du Québec (SQ) Quebec provincial police, the Canadian Army and RCMP, marks a “watershed moment” for Indigenous land defense and struggle on Turtle Island. To mark the 35th anniversary, there was a free public screening of Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993, directed by Alanis Obomsawin) on July 10 at DoughEV (621 Dundas Street), co-hosted by London International Socialists,…

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Pride and Protest: “Parade” Screening at Museum London

Last month, I went to Toronto’s Soulpepper Theatre to watch a production of Michael R. Jackson’s Tony and Pulitzer award-winning musical, “A Strange Loop.” I was stunned by its unapologetic Blackness, especially seeing it amongst a predominantly white crowd. The musical offers a gritty understanding of the lived experiences of a Black gay man in the modern era (modern as in like 2015 modern, to be fair), so much so that a white family with their young daughter packed up and left by the third song. I could not stop thinking about this white family leaving. I kept wondering if…

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Inside the London Premiere of Vancouver-based documentary series Ana Falastini

On May 25, Palestinian-Canadian filmmakers Dalia Al Ahmad and Rawan Ramini came to Western University’s Conron Hall to premiere their Vancouver-based documentary series “Ana Falastini.”  The event brought upwards of 100 community members together and featured surprise performances from the Asala Dabke group and the debut of the Palestinian Threads of Diaspora project in London. The filmmaker duo showed three episodes of their five-episode documentary series, each discussing a specific part of Palestinian identity through interviews in both Arabic and English. Part 1 — History “To be a Palestinian is politicized.”  The first portion of the documentary opened with members…

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“Where Olive Trees Weep”: Roots of injustice and resilience in the West Bank  

“I felt anger towards what the people on the screen were going through. Anger that this injustice – all of this – is still happening. Anger that all of this exists,” says Western University student Kamil Zerdoumi after viewing a film screening of Where Olive Trees Weep at King’s University College on November 29th, 2024. “It made me more aware of this huge, huge imbalance between [the] rights that Israelis and Palestinians have, and made me more fervent in Palestinians getting more rights and equal treatment and more justice, and less forgiving in any attempts to try and be a…

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