Where the Wind Scatters Seeds

Filmhaus Köln / Akademie der Künste der Welt
February 7 - 9, 2025

Over the course of three days, a carefully curated film program, born from interdisciplinary collaboration, takes shape.
Weaving together the intersection of memory, dislocation, and radical solidarity, the program uses film to confront, as well as imagine beyond colonial violence and the ways it warps our sense of self, community, time and space. Complimenting the film program with alternative media forms such as food, music, an interactive drawing corner & a healing conversation circle, the cinema is transformed into a space for nurturing ancestral forms of belonging. It reflects on the essence of home—its presence, what it carries, and the void left in its absence. The showcased works examine the act of remembering, transforming archives into dynamic spaces for resistance, reclamation, and processes of un-learning.

The film festival consisted of three days, each day curated by a different team.

Full Program

DAY 2: Our Eyes Have Exhausted the Vocabulary of Death

Co-curated by Sarah Savalanpour, Shadi Tabibzadeh and me

Borrowing its title from Etel Adnan’s Jenin, this program brings together films that challenge the colonial and authoritarian use of visual media. By reframing archives as spaces of resistance and reclamation, these works highlight memory’s survival and vulnerability, offering insights into how storytelling can preserve histories, forge solidarity, and foster hope amidst loss.
Organised into three sections—Two Rivers and a Wind, Resisting Oblivion, and Vocabulary of Absence—the program traverses landscapes of conflict and displacement, connecting stories across borders to expose shared struggles and resist erasure.

The section, curated by me:

Program #1: Two Rivers and a Wind

This program explores how visual media both sustain and disrupt Indigenous relationships to homelands. To guide us through tonight’s films, I want to introduce two rivers and a wind.

The first river runs through Taiwan, as captured in Water Sleep II: Akaike River under Xizang Road by Taiwanese filmmaker Su Yu Hsin. In her film, the river plays a central role, as the artist investigates all the ways it has been shown on maps. Here, maps are understood not as neutral tools but as ways of rendering lands as territories available for extraction.

Then the program turns to a wind, blowing in the occupied West Bank. “We Have Always Known the Wind’s Direction” by Inas Halabi uses colour to show that colonial invasion is a structure, not an event. This film moves beyond the violent images that have dominated our screens in recent months. Instead, it shifts our focus to the long-term systems that make occupation possible.

Finally, we return to a river—this time in Buryatia, flowing not just through the land but through memory. Artist Natalia Papaeva narrates, rather than shows, her relationship to her native land, leading us through her and her mother’s memories in both Buryat and Russian. The way she moves between languages creates layers of opacity: some might understand both, some, like myself, may only understand Russian, while others may rely on English subtitles. And yet, within these partial understandings, a different kind of connection emerges—one built on feeling, on voice, on the presence of a landscape we cannot fully see.

By bringing these films together, I hope to weave connections across places that are often seen as distant. As we move through these rivers and winds—through landscapes continuously erased by different colonial powers—I want to leave you with a question: What does it mean to move across spaces that others have tried to erase?

Films:

Su Yu Hsin. Water Sleep II Akaike River under Xizang Road (Taiwan 2019; 10'; English/Japanese/Traditional Chinese, English subtitles)

Inas Halabi. We Have Always Known the Wind's Direction (Palestine 2019-2020; 11'; Arabic, English subtitles)

Natalia Papaeva. The River I Grew Up With (The Netherlands 2022- 2023, 30'; Russian/Buryat, English subtitles)

Vincent E.

Vincent E.