Event Description: 

The conversation draws on their respective pedagogical practices: Saeed, a filmmaker who runs the Radical Film School in London since 2015; and Noor, an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker who co-founded with Lara Khaldi the School of Intrusions, an educational platform in Ramallah. In our fourth session of the dialogue series, we are joined by filmmakers and educators Noor Abed and Saeed Taji Farouky to explore different ways in which film and pedagogy intersect to create new ways of learning, teaching and knowing. The conversation draws on their respective pedagogical practices: Taji Farouky, a filmmaker who runs the Radical Film School in London since 2015; and Abed, an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker who co-founded with Lara Khaldi the School of Intrusions, an educational platform in Ramallah. Noor and Saeed will be joined in conversation by multimedia artist, filmmaker, writer, and cultural worker Rafik Opti. 

The Dialogue Sessions are a series of conversations taking place throughout the 2025 Palestinian Film Festival Amsterdam, which invite two cultural producers to share short presentations on their practices followed by an extended conversation between them. This dialogue session is guest curated by Other Cinemas (Arwa Aburawa and Turab Shah). 

Speaker Bios: 

Noor Abed (Palestine) is an artist who works at the intersection of performance and film, combining forms of the ‘staged’ and the ‘documentary’. Her practice examines notions of social choreographies and collective formations, searching through the connection between the notion of ‘synchrony’ and social action. In 2020, she co-founded, with Lara Khaldi, the School of Intrusions, an independent educational collective in Ramallah, Palestine. Abed was an assistant curator in documenta fifteen, Kassel 2021-22, an artist in residence at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam 2022-24. Her film 'A Night We Held Between' was selected as a first-prize winner of the e-flux Film Award 2024. Her book 'Stars at Midday' was published by Occasional Papers in October 2024.

Saeed Taji Farouky is a Palestinian-Egyptian-British filmmaker who has been making films around themes of conflict, human rights, and colonialism since 2005. His latest feature documentary, A Thousand Fires premiered as the opening film in Directors Fortnight of the Locarno Film Festival 2021 where it won the Marco Zucchi award for most innovative documentary. His previous documentary Tell Spring Not to Come This Year premiered at the Berlinale 2015. Farouky is also a radical film educator, regularly teaching, leading workshops, and lecturing about alternative forms of cinematic storytelling. He is designer and lead tutor of the Radical Film School, a free film course based in London dedicated to political filmmakers from marginalised backgrounds.

Rafik Opti is a visionary multimedia artist, filmmaker, writer, and cultural worker. Raised in Amsterdam and rooted in Surinamese ancestry, their artistic practice spans film direction, photography, writing, and the visual use of text. In its entirety, Opti’s work forms an experimental and critical reflection on social and spatial dynamics, particularly within communities silenced by imperialism and racial injustice. Their stories explore themes of (chosen) family, freedom, gender, and sexuality through a lens shaped by personal experience and a collective history of Black resistance. By weaving together mixed media, Opti develops a pioneering visual language that reclaims mainstream narratives and questions dominant power structures in film and society.

Other Cinemas is a Brent-based project established by the filmmaking duo Turab Shah and Arwa Aburawa who saw the need for better and more equitable ways of film-making, sharing, and education. Seeing these three strands as inseparable, their work attempts to create a vital and holistic alternative to the industry that addresses its racial and class biases. Their work is rooted in their diverse neighbourhoods in northwest London, some of the most racially diverse in the country but chronically underserved in terms of cultural provisions. 

2025 Palestinian Film Festival Amsterdam — Virtual Remains

Marking its 10th anniversary, the 2025 edition of the Palestinian Film Festival Amsterdam turns its focus to Gaza under the theme Virtual Remains. Inspired by poet Huda Fakhreddine’s words on Gaza as both place and time, the program reflects on virtuality as representation, imagination, and lived experience in Palestinian history and cinema.

Alongside the rich programme of screenings and parallel events at Ventilator, this year the festival is happy to once again host a souk (bazaar) with arts and crafts featuring Palestine. The market will take over Ventilator’s café space and is free for public entry.  A full list of souk vendors will be announced on the PFFA social media.

More information: www.thepffa.nl