INTERVIEW: Juice Aleem

Juice Aleem / Illustration by Emily DoyleWords & illustration by Emily Doyle

It’s the beginning of Birmingham’s short-lived heatwave. Tilt, the pinball bar, has its doors open and the clatter of the machines echoes into the street. The table is laid out with marker pens, various notebooks, and a black coffee. Juice Aleem arrives and orders a stout.

Juice Aleem has been a key figure in the Birmingham hip hop scene since the mid-nineties. He’s fronted Big Dada collective New Flesh, hosted for Ninja Tune, and collaborated with Coldcut, Hexstatic, and Adam Freeland. 2016 saw the release of his album, Voodu Starchild, and a book on Afrofuturism. He is a director of B-Side Hip Hop Festival. This weekend, he joins Sid Peacock’s Surge Orchestra for a performance at mac to launch Surge in Spring II Festival.

“It’s my first time performing with Sid,” tells Aleem. “We’ve done a few things in the past, like me reviewing some of their gigs. I became aware of them around the time they were doing a tribute to Sun Ra, and I’m quite a Sun Ra fan and someone was like ‘Oh they’re doing this and maybe they could use you and you could meet Sid and you might like this…’ So, that was a two or three years ago and since then we’ve kept in contact. This is part of the culmination of that.”

The performance is titled ‘Rivers of Love’. It’s a reflection on Enoch Powell’s infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, delivered fifty years ago this week in Birmingham.

“We thought a lot of people are going to concentrate on the negatives because it wasn’t the exactly most happy time,” explains Aleem, “so instead of that, let’s look at the positives of the time. Some of them are obvious, some are less so. The country that my father came to, and then my mother later, from two different islands in the Caribbean – when they came here, a bell pepper was something that was hard to get hold of. A bell pepper, as innocuous as a bell pepper is – it’s not spicy, but it only grows originally in certain parts of the world. It has to have sun, it has to have certain types of soil – and it wasn’t here in great amounts. I’m not saying people didn’t know what a bell pepper was, but it wasn’t in every meal. Like on a basic level, there’s a Caribbean food shop just there. We’re sitting here drinking beers and coffees and things. These kinds of beers and coffees in general don’t come from this country. But you know, we all drink coffee. We enjoy these things day in day out.”

“In a way though I understand his speech. I understand some of what he was getting at, though it’s very right wing. The funny thing is, it was Enoch Powell that actually made the call to bring people over here, that’s what people don’t understand. He was the main person to say ‘Hey, Nigeria, India, Jamaica, Trinidad, come over here, come help.’ He was important in that call, and afterwards he was like, ‘ah…’ And that’s what the speech actually entails. It wasn’t necessarily saying don’t come, it wasn’t necessarily saying you have to go home now, but it was saying you have to wear a bowler hat. He talks about how people speak, and learning to speak the Queen’s English. I’m paraphrasing here but like, ‘if you’re going to be here, be here like us. Don’t be too… dark’”.

Sid Peacock’s Surge OrchestraWhen asked about the value of looking back at Enoch Powell’s speech, Aleem is quick to argue it’s cultural importance. “You have to analyse the past. That should be the reason we have history, not just to pass tests. I’m gonna quote Malcolm X: he says that most of the education we have is not an education, it’s an indoctrination. History especially – especially especially. 

I think by now we should have learned some kind of lesson about invasion of people’s land and privacy, ownership, cultural hegemony. I think history is very important, and it’s important to address in it in an artistic manner. It’s incumbent upon artists to do something – you don’t have to be the most knowledgeable. You don’t have to be Public Enemy. You don’t have to be Bob Dylan. You don’t have to get yourself arrested, but at least address certain things within your understanding of the world. Whatever your issue is, whether it’s just being allowed to skateboard in a certain park – that’s your politics.”

Aleem’s own politics are rooted in the Afrofuturist movement. The author of 2016’s Afrofutures and Astro Black Travel: A Passport to a Melanated Future, he is eager to explain the label.

“I think Afrofuturism – let me say straight off, I’m not concerned with that title. It’s just a name for an idea or a concept or an emotion, and we often give things names that we can’t necessarily contain within those letters. It helps people understand… like the film Black Panther. I’ve had people come to me and say, ‘I get what you’re on about now – I’ve just watched Black Panther and I get it’.

Why did Picasso become a better artist by studying what they call primitivism and cubism, by going into African culture? The standard of European cultural so-called superiority is all based on African precepts. Mathematics, archaeology, language; it’s all from a dark skinned person somewhere, usually a dark skinned woman, funnily enough. So, then feminism features in, and intersectional feminism.”

While we talk, I’ve been making sketches for a portrait of Aleem. He looks over at what I’m working on and asks if he can sketch me too. Producing a case of markers, he gets to work. Aleem’s art style is a reflection of him – bold, unapologetic, but always endearing. It echoes eighties comic books, a recurring topic in our conversation. I ask why he feels drawn to the medium.

“I love Stan Lee and Jack Kirby,” tells Aleem. “Marvel not only made superheroes, they also took existing heroes because these aren’t owned by any copyright anymore, so you’ve got thousands of years of stories that you don’t have to pay for. You put Thor, the god of thunder from Norse mythology, you put him in to the premier superhero group of the sixties Marvel Comic Company, and this is perfect.

Superheroes already exist in mythology. One of the first heroes in East African mythology, where some people speculate we get the word ‘hero’, is Heru, or Horus. He’s already a superhero by virtue: ‘Oh my parents are kind of like gods, and I did this and I conquered that and I came back from death…’ Well, you’re a superhero. If you explain an angel to somebody without using the word, it would sound like a superhero. In west African mythology you have things called the orishas which are like gods, spirits, but lesser than the supreme. They have different attributes, this one can control the water, this one can do that. We would call those beings superheroes. 

Since we’ve started calling superheroes ‘superheroes’, there’s been a lot of wars. Comics came to the fore particularly in the forties and fifties, times of world war. There’s a need in the human psyche to be saved. And as we’re, in a general, less religious, in the Judeo-Christian monotheistic sense, we might not call for Jesus anymore or Jehovah… we may call for Superman. We may call for Spiderman. And again, these archetypes already exist. Spiderman, Anansi, you know where I’m going. Superman is Kal-El – in Hebrew, ‘of god’. They’re already there.”

Juice Aleem is a font of knowledge on the lineage of the superhero archetype throughout civilisation. I ask him if it’s role within the Afrofuturist movement is a healthy one – does African/African Diaspora culture deserve a more varied representation in the future?

“I think Luke Cage is a representation of the black everyman,” answers Aleem. “Obviously, the everyman that got put through a chemical process that gives him bullet proof skin and super strong muscle strength, which obviously happens to most people… Actually, as much as I down it a little bit, I think that’s what Black Lightning’s good for. He’s got powers, but he’s very much a school teacher. I think that’s the problem with the programme. All the crescendos of the story are based in almost too normal a storyline for an African-American family. For me, personally, I’m happy to escape that. Do I need another story about black gangs, black-on-black violence, drug dealing? I think I might have seen that already. 

That’s why Afrofuturism is important to me, more interesting, because it flips a different switch in your brain. Even if we consciously want to be friends with everybody, we are subconsciously going to be sexist. We are subconsciously going to be misogynist. We are subconsciously going to be homophobic, or racist. There’s certain things in our upbringing, in our society that are going to trigger us. And that’s why I think it’s important to do things that are going to challenge us, not only in our documentation but in our experimentation.” 

Juice Aleem and Surge Orchestra present ‘Rivers of Love’ at mac on Saturday 21st April. Doors open for the mac Theatre at 1pm, with ticket priced at £10 / £9.10 – for direct event information and online ticket sales, visit www.macbirmingham.co.uk/event/surge-in-spring-ii-juice-aleem-and-surge-orchestra

For more on Juice Aleem, visit www.juicealeem.co.uk 

For more on Sid Peacock and Surge Orchestra, visit www.surgeorchestra.com

For more from the mac, including full event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.macbirmingham.co.uk

ED’S PICK: April ‘18

Words by Ed King

Easter Sunday, 1st April… There’s probably a joke in there somewhere. But with a basket of listings and entertainment based excel spreadsheets to plough through who has the time to be witty? Or hunt for Easter eggs, for that matter. Being an adult sucks.

However (…are you ready for this segue) it does allow me to enjoy all the delights of the Flatpack Film Festival without worrying about ID – actually, I’m not sure there’s too much on the programme with an age restriction but Dots & Loops are part of the festival and they brought us Lesley the Pony Has and A+ Day!, so…

Back for festival number 12, those glorious creatives at Flatpack have put on a nine day smorgasbord of celluloid, digital, and other audio/visual treats – running from 13th to 22nd April, in a variety of venue across the city. Too much to cram into this round up; look out for our more in-depth cherry pick in the days to come, or click here for more direct information on the full programme.

Elsewhere in the non-greenfield, Ebola flirting, footwear wrecking land of multi-stage events, we have the Birmingham Literature Festival – hop scotching from various corners of the REP to the Birmingham and Midland Institute from 27th to 29th April. Now old enough to drink beer in America, this year’s Birmingham Literature Festival has a focus on women in literature and publishing, alongside a weekend long programme of ‘inspiring conversations, writing and debate’. Again too much to adequately surmise, but click here for more direct info.

Following on with a female focus, Birmingham Jazz launches its Legends Festival on 27th April – running as a series of satellite events across the city until 20th May. This year’s linchpin is ‘Celebrating Women in Jazz’, with local artists such as Trish Clowes joining a myriad of talent from across the globe. Too much to fit into… you know the drill, click here.

Theatre comes in all shapes and sizes this month, including a couple of choice cuts on Hurst Street – with Wicked beginning its Birmingham run at the Hippodrome (4th-29th Apr) and The Twisted Tale of Hansel and Gretel at the Patrick Centre (4th– 8th Apr).

Across the duel carriageways and road works we have Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock coming to the Birmingham REP (10th – 14th) followed by the political see-saw of 1970’s Britain in This House (17th – 21st) – reminding us fear mongering comes from both sides of the aisle and a dash of vitriol isn’t a particular new idea. How times have changed… or not.

Music takes its usual fat belly slice of our monthly listings, with a few ‘big gigs’ of notE coming to the NEC portfolio – as the Genting Arena sees both Arcade Fire (15th Apr) and Dua Lipa (17th Apr), whilst Arena Birmingham welcomes the Manic Street Preachers (27th Apr) back to the city.

Playing across the non-arena rooms of our musical city, the Hare & Hounds has another eclectic mix – with Kushikatsu Records presenting Shonen Knife (15th Apr) followed Snowpoet (19th Apr) courtesy of Jazzlines. Whilst The Glee Club sees the very welcome return of Nerina Pallot (9th Apr) stopping off in Birmingham on the second date if her UK tour. Fingers crossed there’s a piano on stage.

The Sunflower Lounge sees Killer Wave and Outlander host their ‘Help the Homeless’ pay-as-you-feel charity fundraiser (8th Apr) – with all money raised going to Shelter and Tabor House. Then we have Lucy May Walker playing her first headline show in Birmingham (18th Apr) – both events well worth a stop, look and listen. And £5 of your hard earned cash, of course.

Our mobile branded venues see a bevy of acts this month too, with the O2 Academy presenting George Ezra (4th Apr), The Vaccines (7th Apr), Trivium (17th Apr), The Streets (19th Apr), Coasts (21st Apr) and Akala (24th Apr). Whilst the O2 Institute leads out with Walk the Moon (7th Apr), Little Comets (14th Apr), Aquilo (16th Apr), Of Mice and Men (25th Apr) and Sharon Needles: Battle Axe Tour (26th Apr).

A special mention also has to go to the Hummingbird-Menagerie-Indie-salad days-nostalgia trip coming to the O2 Academy with Love From Stourbridge – featuring The Wonder Stuff and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin (14th Apr). Someone pass me my German army shirt, skateboard and a can of Red Stripe, we’re going early 90’s feral…

And if you’re committed to your anti-corporate support of live music, never fear as mac welcomes Juice Aleem & Surge Orchestra (21st Apr) whilst Mama Roux’s serves two sides of the musical rainbow with The Herbaliser (19th Apr) and Mallory Knox (24th Apr)… probably not a good idea to get those dates mixed up in your diary.

Elsewhere in the city, comedy offers a relatively strong respite from those kids and their music – with The Glee Club presenting Tony Law (13th Apr), Alun Cochrane (15th Apr) and Craig Campbell (22nd Apr).

Or if you just want to stand and stare, you could waste a happy hour or two at Lewes Herriot: The Glass Arcana exhibition at Artefact in Stirchley (13th – 14th Apr). Or watching the flyers unfold with an exhibition from the seminal 90’s ambient electro club Oscillate, at Centrala (16th – 28th Apr) – bearing in mind there is an end of exhibition party with HIA and POLE (28th Apr) so you might want to do more than actually just stand and stare. Or not. Depends how you dance to Sun Electric, I suppose. Necking enough amphetamines to kill a small horse always worked for me, but vegetarian options are available.

But to end on the most glamorous of high notes (pun absolutely intended) Paul Alexsandr and Dragpunk present Candyland at The Nightingale (6th Apr) – a choc full celebration of ‘local and national UK drag of all genders, sexualities and abilities that you’ll adore.’ Then at the other end of the April rainbow, Opulence are launching Mother’s Meeting at Bar Jester (28th Apr) – a band spanking new ‘performance night dedicated to showing off a variety of drag and queer talent across Birmingham and the U.K.’, with special guest Charity Kase joined by a pageant of the Opulence crew on stage and Elliot Barnicle on the decks.

Birmingham can be proud for many reasons, but the cross over embrace of its drag community is one to really get those flags waving. We love covering it, and it seems the punters of Birmingham love supporting it. So, Vive la/le drag community of our fair/fairer city, alongside all who sail on these most wonderful of waters. Save some energy though, Birmingham Pride is a mere calendar page turn away.

And wait, I’ve just thought of one. A Jewish carpenter and a 6ft rabbit walk into Cadbury World…

For more on any of the events listed here, click on the highlighted hyperlinks. Ed King is Editor-in-Chief of Review Publishing, which issues both the Birmingham Review and Birmingham Preview. To follow Ed King on Twitter, click here.

BREVIEW: Playback @ mac – running until 24.01.18

BREVIEW: Playback @ mac – running until 24.01.18 / Ed KingWords by Ashleigh Goodwin / Pics by Ed King

Stepping into Playback almost feels like the beginning of a Black Mirror episode; the silence is palpable in the dimly-lit space, as people sit before screens, each person plugged into the monitors, staring intently ahead.

The calm and quiet is a welcome distraction from the packed lower floor of mac, where people are continuously swarming around the open space; weirdly enough, even though the double doors to Playback are open, it feels like a safe haven, isolated from the rest of the arts centre.

The set-up is functional, yet quite captivating; minimalist structures are set up throughout the room that encase a screen to select films, a monitor to watch and a couple of pairs of headphones below. This could be quite a passive experience, one where you stumble in, take a quick look and exit to explore the rest of the gallery, yet each person who enters is memorised and instantly takes a seat in one of the stalls to begin.

A real highlight of the exhibition is the complete flexibility it offers. The interface is so simplistic you can easy browse comedy, drama, music, dance, drama or animation with the touch of a button. The idea that Playback brings the films to the audience, as opposed to the other way round, is an interesting format and is a smart way of getting the endevours of budding creatives out there.

Much of the work being displayed covers scenarios so far removed from the viewer that you’re able to gain a sobering, eye-opening insight. For example, Courtney Grigg’s 18, a POV documentary that explores Courtney’s journey through homelessness when she was eighteen. Or Rediat Abayneh’s 25 Days of My Life, which is dedicated to those ‘who lost their lives in search of better’ and charts her brief stay in the infamous refugee camp ‘The Jungle’ prior to her journey to England from Calais. These pieces draw you in immediately by conveying such emotion in a short time frame. I felt myself unintentionally breathing a small sigh of relief and gratitude when I read in the description below that despite the circumstances depicted in their work, they are now studying towards their chosen career, or are exploring another walk of life and have made it out of sombre situations.

BREVIEW: Playback @ mac – running until 24.01.18 / Ed KingI can say with complete honesty, there was not one single short I viewed that I didn’t appreciate in some way. Each work was enlightening and completely unique. In mainstream film I often feel like what I’m watching is just regurgitated with a different cast, location or a slight differentiation of a basic scenario. The sheer individuality of each piece presented at Playback took me by surprise; alongside thought-pieces and documentaries charting real life experiences, the exhibition was brimming with off-the-wall, abstract and bizarre concepts, which was so refreshing and showed the passion of hungry young filmmakers.

I felt this was especially reflected in Battle by Darnell Smart, which relied on mostly a non-verbal performance, mixed with sound effects to create distortion of the main character Deshawn. The minimalist setting and almost sterile visual at the end combined for a really effecting piece. Additionally, Bliss by Billy Floyd stuck in my memory long afterwards. No dialogue was needed, as the piece was carried by minimal sound effects and intense, non-verbal performances that used the same setting for each shot, just varying the content. Battle and Bliss left me genuinely excited for the work that future filmmakers will produce as the execution of these ideas was something I hadn’t witnessed before and really, this is what Playback is all about.

BREVIEW: Playback @ mac – running until 24.01.18 / Ed KingIt would be near impossible to comment on all the content, with over 145 short films, ranging from 90 seconds to three minutes a piece, on show. If you do have the opportunity, give yourself a full day and head down to mac and see, or rather experience, for yourself – Playback is free to enter and in the arts centre’s First Floor Gallery until Wednesday 24 January 2018. I’m sure each individual will discover something different from the next and connect with the pieces in a completely unique way. Personally, I tend to gravitate towards drama, but the flexibility of Playback exposed me to a world of other possibilities; content that I would never have previously considered due to admittedly, my own ignorance or dismissal of genres that don’t seem instantly appealing.

I felt a particular highlight was the animation section and I’m so glad I allowed myself to be led by the exhibition, as there were some excellent pieces in there. Specifically, My Familiar by Leah Morris, an animation that blends live action scenes with animation to explore ‘the comforts of non-verbal communication’ in the face of isolation and loneliness. The piece is set against a minimalist, yet effecting score, and uses no verbal narrative within its series of vignettes, which works to astounding effect. So much so that halfway through I looked down to find myself with little marks imprinted into my palm where I’d be gripping the chord of the headphones, completely engrossed.

BREVIEW: Playback @ mac – running until 24.01.18 / Ed KingOr Meet Cute, another short that splices live action with animation and blurs the line of creation, production, fiction and reality – a fun and interesting piece by Chris Consentino. Adrift was also a highlight, a short sci-fi that ‘blends lo-fi animation, indie folk and quirky live action’ by Will Crerar, an aspiring screenwriter and director from Newcastle. The drama explores decision making through the protagonist, a teenage boy trapped in space, who is at the crossroads of change but hesitant to move forward. The setting and minimal, spoken-narrative deliver a point that is reflective of wider society in an extremely clever way.

After two hours of selecting films I was completely captivated by the exhibition’s documentaries and dramas and found the comedy section to be a welcome break, one that pulled me outside my head for a while. Some highlights were Contactless that deals with a scenario not as far removed from the future as it should be, set against the backdrop of Birmingham with a whacky, upbeat soundtrack that allows the comedic overtone to shine through but also elevates the distress and seriousness of the political message. The variation in styles was a joy to experience throughout all the genres, but in particular, in shorts such as Chops which is a beautifully stylised laugh-out-loud piece by Jac Clinch, and Slice by Hari Ramakrishnan, a dark satire exploring the graduate experience with great visuals and perfectly delivered narrative by Marie Hamilton, paired with an eerily perfect performance by Dorothy Collins.

The final highlight was All That Is by Camille Summers Valli and Wessie Du Toit, a beautifully shot drama-documentary that intimately explores ‘love and its role in the lives of five individuals’, through snapshots in a stunning sepia quality. As the short eloquently states “any experience is good, to talk about it is better” – which I feel encompasses the whole event perfectly.

There were 145 narratives for the audience to explore in Playback and each has taken a personal experience, feeling, emotion or thought and turned it into a work of art. Most of the work can be found through the Random Acts website, but actually attending the exhibition adds so much more to the experience, as you’re able to fully submerge yourself amongst the work in the peaceful atmosphere that the mac has created.

Events such as Playback are vital in the medium of film, creating exposure for young creative, as well as giving them a platform and voice to address current issues and situations. We just need to be ready to listen.

Playback – running at mac until 24.01.18

Playback runs at mac until 24th January, held in the arts centre’s First Floor Gallery. Entry is free with no age restrictions. For more on Playback at mac, visit www.macbirmingham.co.uk/exhibition/playback

To view a list of all the Playback dates across the UK, visit www.ica.art/ica-off-site/touring-exhibitions/playback/about-playback-touring-exhibition-association-random-acts

For more from mac, including full event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.macbirmingham.co.uk

BPREVIEW: Playback @ mac 07-24.01.18

Playback @ mac 07-24.01.18

Words by Ashleigh Goodwin

It often feels like there is a momentary hush over the city as we pick ourselves up off 2017’s floor and stumble into 2018. We could spend this transitional time recovering from the short-lived break, however mac is offering an alternative – welcoming in the New Year with Playback, ‘an interactive exhibition showcasing over 200 short films made by young artist filmmakers from across the country’.

Playback runs in mac’s First Floor Gallery from 7th to 24th January, open 11am-5pm from Tuesdays to Sundays. Admission to Playback is free. For direct  info, including venue details and the wider facilities available at mac, click here.

Playback is a joint initiative funded by Arts Council England and the exhibition’s creator, Random Acts – a Channel 4 spawned endevour which launched in March 2017 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. Playback aims to shine a spotlight on new work by providing support, funding and exhibition opportunities to ‘young artist filmmakers from across the country’. With some of these ‘remarkable and award-winning shorts’ being made within ‘in and around Birmingham’, Playback promises visitors ‘the chance to see the people, places and creativity of your city onscreen.’

The exhibition allows you to explore the bodies of work at your own pace, using interactive touch screens, and features genres including spoken word, comedy and drama. As mac’s website states, the films being exhibited at Playback ‘span a range of art forms and topics – from krumping and parkour dance shorts, to an animated tale of teenage love that unearths our desire to be as cool as the zines we read.’

Birmingham’s prominence continues to grow around the many aspects of film, with the city seeing an influx of location shooting on its streets as well as increasing ties to organisations such as the British Film Institute and Marv Films. Added to this, the number of ways to access film in Birmingham has grown significantly within the past few years, with cinemas such as The Electric, The Mockingbird and Everyman supporting independent, current and cult productions through their programmes. Events such as the Flatpack Film Festival and the Birmingham Film Festival have become annual platforms for filmmakers, often bolstered by a rolling calendar of events to celebrate and support initiative new works, such as those programmed by Flatpack: Assemble.

Playback has the potential to fit nicely between these established city operators, by providing support to independent artists with the ‘festival feel’ offered by the variety and quantity of pieces exhibited. It could be that Playback’s ‘USP’ is that it allows a more open and customer driven experience as you are free to examine whatever you choose, whenever you choose.

As well as its exhibition at mac’s First Floor Gallery this January, Playback is being toured throughout England in ‘major galleries, libraries and multi-arts venues’ – culminating with the Playback Festival 2018, to be held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts from 21st to 25th March ‘18.

Additionally, there are multiple Playback events to be held at mac Birmingham throughout January – including animation, film making workshops, and a live spoken word event.

Playback – coming to mac’s First Floor Gallery 04-24.01.18

For more on Playback at mac, visit www.macbirmingham.co.uk/exhibition/playback

To view a list of all the Playback dates across the UK, visit www.ica.art/ica-off-site/touring-exhibitions/playback/about-playback-touring-exhibition-association-random-acts

For more from mac, including full event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.macbirmingham.co.uk

BPREVIEW: Screening Rights Film Festival @ mac 26.10-01.11.17

BPREVIEW: Screening Rights Film Festival @ mac 26.10-01.11.17

Words by Heather Kincaid

Returning for its third year in 2017, Screening Rights Film Festival is Birmingham’s international festival of social justice film –screenings features from around the world, with Q&A sessions and panel discussions on the themes and issues they address.

Held at mac, Screening Rights Film Festival 2017 will run from Thursday 26 October until Wednesday 1 November – with ticket deals available for people booking multiple screenings. For more info, including venue details and online ticket sales, click here

According to the Screening Rights Film Festival website, ‘The need for heartfelt films about the depths of human adversity around the world has grown enormously in recent decades’ – as the festival organisers seek to inspire and develop debate by shining a light on filmmakers responding to major contemporary concerns. At the heart of the project is the question of the potential for film, both drama and documentary, ‘to affect, or even effect, personal, social and political change’, whether by informing, provoking, moving, inciting action, connecting people or simply bearing witness to events.

Emerging out of research conducted by former University of Birmingham film lecturer Dr Michele Aaron, Screening Rights Film Festival has spent the last couple of years steadily establishing a place in the city’s cultural calendar. With Aaron having recently taken up a post at Warwick, this year the festival has been helped by the joint support of both universities, as well as a base at mac Birmingham.

Ghost Hunting @ mac 26.10.17 / Screening Rights Film FestivalBuilding on her long-held interest in the ethics of film and spectatorship, the project was originally kicked off by a symposium on ‘Screening Vulnerability’, beginning as an event series co-organised by Aaron and PhD student, John Horne. In 2016, it expanded to encompass twelve films screened in five different venues. This year, however, the focus has narrowed again, with just nine films being shown at mac. It’s a little smaller then, but the greater simplicity afforded by a single, centralised location might well work in the festival’s favour in terms of attracting audiences.

Unsurprisingly, the films being shown at the Screening Rights Film Festival reflect the organisers’ specific areas of expertise and investigation, as well as being influenced by hot topics on the global sociopolitical stage. Dr Aaron has described how, in recent years, her focus has shifted from writing about “power and ethics of representation and spectatorship in relationship to, principally, mainstream English cinema,” and towards a more outward-looking approach with an interest in film practice, often collaborating with filmmakers and community groups.

Among the manifestations of this change has been an intensive smartphone filmmaking course delivered to university students from the West Bank with the help of Palestinian youth advocacy agency, Sharek. Tramontane @ mac 26.10.17 / Screening Rights Film FestivalThe best short film to come out of that ‘Tammayaz’ scheme was screened at last year’s Screening Rights Film Festival, alongside Mohamed Jabaly’s and Abu Marzouq’s Ambulance. Meanwhile, John Horne’s PhD thesis concerns the ‘western’ spectator and the ‘Arab Spring’. Accordingly, films from and/or about the Middle East feature prominently on this year’s programme, making up a total of six out of the nine films being shown.

2017’s line-up includes the documentary Ghost Hunting, in which Palestinian director Raed Andoni confronts his demons head-on by recruiting a team to help him build a replica of the Israeli interrogation centre where he was held at the age of 18.

Drama Tramontane follows the struggle of a young Lebanese man to uncover the truth about his origins and identity after discovering that his ID card is a forgery; while Raving Iran sees two DJs forced to make a choice between home and family or moving abroad to pursue their passion for forbidden ‘Western’ music.

In The Other Side of Home, a Turkish woman raises questions about identity in a moving, personal tribute to the still-denied Armenian genocide of 1915; in Mr Gay Syria, the crowdfunded debut feature of Ayşe Toprak, a group of LGBT Syrian refugees kick back against intolerance in Turkey.

Raving Iran @ mac 01.11.17 / Screening Rights Film FestivalThere’s also Notes to Eternity, a more ‘impressionistic meditation’ on the Israel-Palestine conflict, centred on the lives and ideas of prominent thinkers and Israeli policy critics Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Sara Roy and Robert Fisk.

Another area of interest for the festival’s creators has been depictions of illness, madness and even death on screen. Among Aaron’s more recent projects, for example, has been the Life: Moving exhibition, comprising a series of films created with residents of Erdington’s John Taylor Hospice, lately displayed at Birmingham REP as part of a wider UK and international tour.

This year, Screening Rights Film Festival has joined forces with Flatpack Assemble to present a screening of Jennifer Brea’s Unrest, which charts the director’s own experience of living with ME, otherwise known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

Jaha's Promise @ mac 29.10.17 / Screening Rights Film FestivalDespite the fact that thousands of people worldwide independently attest to similar symptoms, medical science has so far failed to offer any explanation for the condition, leading many to conclude that it is purely psychosomatic. In an attempt to conduct some investigations of her own and potentially change attitudes towards the illness, Brea connected with fellow sufferers, piecing together her film from recorded Skype interviews, iPhone footage and professionally shot vérité.

Coinciding with mac Birmingham’s ongoing Women and Protest season (13 September – 26 November), Jaha Dukureh also uses personal experience as a springboard for her film Jaha’s Promise. Now based in the US, the activist began her life in Gambia where a significant number of girls are subjected to Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) during infancy. Having been cut at just a week old, Jaha herself did not discover the truth or what it would mean for her until she was married to an older man at the age of 15. After having a daughter of her own, however, she vowed to return to her home country to confront its deeply embedded culture of FGM, whatever the cost.

Finally, Nick de Pencier’s Black Code uses The Citizen Lab’s 2009 exposure of global internet spy ring ‘Ghostnet’ as a starting point for a chilling exploration of 21st Century surveillance culture. In an unnerving trailer that combines archive footage with satellite imagery and CCTV-style shots, Citizen Lab director Dr Ronald Deibert describes the highly detailed and growing “digital exhaust” produced by Internet users and how three developments – mobile devices, social media and cloud computing – have resulted in “the most profound change in communication technology in the whole of human history”.

But this isn’t just a case of emails being intercepted: there are hints of cameras and audio devices being hacked and switched on unbeknownst to owners, and documents being extracted from hard-drive storage. “This is where Big Data meets Big Brother,” the trailer concludes. Prepare to leave feeling a little paranoid…

Unrest – @ mac 27.10.17 / Screening Rights Film Festival

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWZ1_-7KOS4

Screening Rights International Film Festival is at mac Birmingham from Thursday 26 October until Wednesday 1 November – ticket deals are available for people booking multiple screenings. For more info, including venue details and online ticket sales, click here

For more on Screening Rights Film Festival, visit www.screeningrights.org

For more information about mac Birmingham, including full event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.macbirmingham.co.uk