TUESDAY 1ST APRIL 2025 | 7PM | £10 ADV £6 STUDENTS/ CONCESSIONS
On April 1st, a date of misdirection and illusion, we reflect on the greatest deception of all—the erasure of feminist histories, the suppression of voices, and the myths that shape who is remembered and who is forgotten.
Inspired partly by the UK’s ethnic classification o f ‘Other Asian’—a category that renders many invisible—this program, in partnership with the University of Sussex, presents two films that unravel the tension between voice and silence, visibility, and control.
Feminists, Inshallah: The Story of Arab Feminism.
Feriel Ben Mahmoud, 2014, 55 min, (France / Tunisia / Egypt / Lebanon / Algeria) Arabic & French with English subtitles
Screening time: 7:30 PM
The history of feminism in the Arab world is one of resistance, revival, and repression. From the women who fought against colonial rule to the activists of today, Feminism, Inshallah traces over a century of struggle.
Challenging the persistent narrative that feminism is an imported ideology, it reveals instead a long and deeply rooted tradition of defiance, following the emergence of feminist movements across Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, and Lebanon—moments of radical possibility that were, time and again, met with censorship and silencing.
Looking for Oum Kulthoum
Shirin Neshat, 2017, 90 min, (Germany / Austria / Italy / Lebanon ) Farsi, Arabic, English with English and Arabic subtitles.
Screening time: 9:00 PM
Oum Kulthoum was not simply the most famous singer in the Arab world—she was, and remains, an unmatched cultural phenomenon. Her monthly radio broadcasts brought cities to a standstill; streets would empty, cafes overflowed, and silence would descend across the region as millions tuned in. Dubbed Kawkab al-Sharq—the Star of the East—her voice became the collective memory of a people. Presidents and poets sought her favour; her funeral drew over four million mourners, eclipsing that of heads of state.
But what of the woman behind the myth? And what does it mean to try and tell her story?
Shirin Neshat’s Looking for Oum Kulthum is not a biopic, but a meditation on power, ambition, and the impossibility of capturing an icon. The film follows an Iranian director attempting to make a film about this legendary icon, only to find herself caught in the same structures of exclusion that shaped the singer’s own life. The line between artist and subject begins to blur. Fiction and reality collapse.
In a world that elevates its female icons while restricting their agency, this film asks: what does it take for a woman to have a voice, and what does it cost?
This is the last edition of the Other Asias film season before we return in September. On April 1st, we mark the end of the ‘Mirrors for Princes’ cycle with films that interrogate the limits imposed on women’s stories—by history, by culture, and by the cinematic form itself.
Other Asias is a film programme inspired by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s challenge to rethink "Asia" and the ethnic classification ‘Other Asian’ used in the UK to describe individuals who self-identify as Asian but do not fit within the four largest Asian ethnic categories. This programme seeks to explore the complexities of identity, and otherness, disrupting what has been under and misrepresented within mainstream narratives.
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