The Story of Aleppo At the beginning of the Syrian uprising, Aleppo symbolized dissent to Assad rule culturally, with its unique plethora of artistic, cultural and civil society initiatives. The very same city that once represented hope is now the site of violence and despair. The story of Aleppo needs to be told.…
Long before March 2011, Syria was known as the “kingdom of silence”. All forms of artistic and public expression were controlled by the regime, only those who mastered the regime’s censorship rule-book managed to sneak in their subtle message through the many red lines. From the outset of the uprising against tyranny in 2011, public…
One Day in Aleppo by Ali Alibrahim After five months of the suffocating siege and daily bombings of the city of Aleppo, a group of children take it upon themselves to start painting colors in their city as a game in order to forget their daily struggles and to sow some optimism among the hundreds…
Last year, one of the worst human tragedies took place in Aleppo. After a few months of siege and indiscriminate shelling, tens of thousands of people were evicted from the city. Beyond the horrific scenes of bombardment and forced mass eviction, little reflection has followed on how and why these violations happened and what…
The air is still filled with dust from demolished buildings. Hands search desperately through what is now a total ruin, moving bricks and rebars in hope of finding someone alive. We follow Khalid, Subhi, and Mahmoud, three Syrians who volunteer for the organisation known as The White Helmets. Now they are doing everything in their…
Om filmen Aleppos opprør mot regimet og senere sammenbrudd under massivt bombardement er som et symbol på den arabiske våren. Folket reiste seg i protest mot diktaturet men motstanden var splittet i mange fraksjoner og den klarte aldri stå imot volden fra regimet. I filmen Aleppo's Fall reiser den norsk-syriske regissøren Nizam Najjar tilbake til…
In collaboration with HUMAN International Documentary Film Festival and Kunstnernes Hus The Film: Taste of Cement A portrait of workers in exile, Taste of Cement is an empathetic encounter with people who have lost their past and their future, locked in the recurring present. A poetic essay documentary about Syrian construction workers building new skyscrapers…
Welcome to a lunch seminar co-hosted by the Syrian Peace Action Centre (SPACE) and PRIO, on establishing rights-based guiding principles to discuss reconstructing Syria. Background The war in Syria is far from over. The recent escalation by the Syrian regime and its ally, Russia, against civilians in Eastern Ghouta, and the Turkish military offensive against…
“When Time Is All You Have Left” explores how synchronization and translation mediate our experience of lost time as a temporality of migration. Lost time is an experience that is central to the dissonance felt in the shift from familiar rhythms to the mastery of new temporalities that we struggle to participate in shaping. This…
Thus prison is time you mark the first days on walls the following months on memory but when the years become a long train tired of whistling despairing of a station you try something else: forgetting – Excerpts from Mirrors of Absence by Faraj Bayrakdar With his short verses, the award-winning poet and uncompromising dissident…