articule invites you to the screening of two films engaging with recent manifestations of resistance and political struggle in the Arab World.  The event is organized in collaboration with the Dr. Kay Dickinson at Concordia University's Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema.

Filmmakers Brad Butler, Karen Mirza and Basma Alsharif will be in attendance for the double screening and Q&A.

Deep State is a science fiction inflected protest "training film," made in collaboration with author China Miéville. The film takes as its starting points different moments of political struggle, informed particularly by current revolutionary processes taking place in Egypt, and made in close collaboration with the Cairo media collective Mosireen. Its title, coming from the Turkish term ‘Derin Devlet’ meaning ‘state within the state,’ points to this shadowy nexus of special interests and covert relationships as the place where real power is said to reside, and where fundamental decisions are made – decisions that often run counter to the outward impression of democracy. 

Home Movies Gaza introduces us to the Gaza Strip as a microcosm for the failure of civilization. In an attempt to describe the everyday of a place that struggles for the most basic of human rights, this video installation claims a perspective from within the domestic spaces of a territory that is complicated, derelict, and altogether impossible to separate from its political identity. 

Karen Mirza and Brad Butler are two London-based artists who have worked in collaboration since meeting at the Royal College of Art in 1998.  In 2004, they formed no.w.here, an artist-run space for the production, discussion and dissemination of practices engaged with the moving image, politics, technology and aesthetics.  no.w.here's role as a cooperative environment is directly related to the centring of Mirza and Butler's own practice upon collaboration, dialogue and the social.  Since 2007, they have pursued a stain of practice entitled The Museum of non Participation.  This ongoing body of work confronts (non) participation and the socio-political in art works.  This Museum consistently evokes through the geo-political ground upon which it works are produced and presented, in keeping with its initial formation.  This work has been presented in Egypt, Pakistan, Germany and the United Kingdom.  Deep State is their most recent film. It was commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and funded by Arts Council England and London Councils.  Deep State has been nominated for the Jarman Award, 2012.

Basma Alsharif (born in Kuwait to Palestinian parents) is a visual artist working between cinema and installation. Raised in France and the US, she has lived and worked nomadically since receiving her MFA in 2007. She developed her practice between Chicago, Cairo, Beirut, Sharjah, Amman and most recently Paris. Informed by placeless-ness and home-lessness, her works have explored the human condition in relation to the subjective experience of political history. She creates complex soundtracks and employs various languages, texts, images, mediums and formal strategies to transmit information through the visceral experience of cinema. Her works have been shown in solo exhibitions, bienniales and festivals including YIDFF, the Jerusalem Show, TIFF, the Berlinale, Videobrasil, and Manifesta 8. She won a Jury Prize at the 9th Sharjah Biennial, was awarded the Fundacion Botin Visual Arts grant, received the Marion McMahon Award at the Images Festival in Toronto and was a recent guest of the Flaherty Film Seminar in Upstate New York. Basma is represented by Galerie Imane Fares in Paris and her works are distributed by the Video Data Bank.