We Never Imagined All the Cameras Would be Useless

Image: Yahya Alsholy, Escape from Farida (still), 2025.

The Gaza Biennale and the Forbidden Museum of Al Risan Mountain, in collaboration with Recess and e-flux Screening Room, present films by Emad Badwan and Yahya Alsholy, filmmakers and artists working in Gaza today. The works of Badwan and Alsholy challenge the ubiquitous image of life in Gaza, fusing fact and fiction to capture the material and unconscious realities of a life distorted by genocide, pushing the medium to its limits.

The screening will be presented alongside a virtual Q&A with the filmmakers, moderated by Farah Barqawi and Omar Berrada.

These films are part of the New York Pavilion of the Gaza Biennale, on view at Recess through December 20, 2025.

Ticket proceeds will go towards supporting the artists and the Gaza Biennale.

Films
Emad Badwan, Live Broadcast بث مباشر
2025, 10 minutes. Produced in Deir al-Balah.
A journalist leaves his reporting station just minutes before his live broadcast, to go to the restroom. In the long queue of impatient people, the war is discussed by those waiting in line. Some praise the photographer, while others criticize him for not covering a particular incident or for not being at a certain location during a specific event. The photographer’s tense state and need to use the restroom continue to rise until he reluctantly returns to the live broadcast to cover an ongoing massacre. The story is humorous and painful, capturing the often-overlooked, quotidian struggles of refugees surviving amidst a genocide.

Yahya Alsholy, Escape from Farida الهروب من فريدة
2025, 15 minutes. Produced in North Gaza.
A film about a young man whose aspirations are shattered in the alleys of a city altered by war. He tries to rid himself of his past and leave. However, he must confront his fiancée Farida with his decision to leave the city, igniting memories and contradictions within him.

Yahya Alsholy, The Curse of Children Who Grew Up from Oranges لعنة الأطفال الذين نشأوا من البرتقال
2025, 2 minutes. Produced in Jabalia.
How do children experience the violence of genocide in Gaza, an extreme situation that distorts their sense of normalcy? This question guides Yayha Alsholy in his video, The Curse of Children Who Grew Up from Oranges, where reality and illusion blend into one another. A nightmare from which one cannot escape, the video is at the same time interspersed with images of lushness and the sight of a fresh orange. The ambivalence of the passports that at once shape our lives but have no material value become seeds of growth among the horrific perception of the surrounding violence. Alluding to how children, tremendously affected by the Israeli onslaught on Gaza, perceive these events in illogical ways, the video conveys the complexity of experiences through a combination of staged scenes and real footage overlaid by the color of oranges.

Yahya Alsholy, Completely Invisible غير مرئي تماما
2025, 2 minutes. Produced in North Gaza.
This video work sketches scenes reflected in the eyes of children, observed by the eyes watching them, giving us images of their imagination as they try to interpret the cruelty of what surrounds them, amid a visual chaos shaped mercilessly by war. In this closed frame, with their besieged eyes and their stained imaginations, the children find no refuge except to surrender to watching, under the weight of a constant feeling of being small, and a deep-rooted sense that they are melting into the shadow, without trace, without presence, completely invisible.

Born in 1983 in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, Emad Badwan holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Institute of Beaux-arts at the Al Aqsa University of Gaza. He is a member of the Palestinian Artist Union and the Syndicate of Foreign Journalists working in the occupied territories. His art reveals the beauty within Gaza, primarily focusing on the children whom he considers to be the hope of Gaza, but also bringing forth a centuries-old culture that proudly continues to exist. He believes that it is possible to achieve peace through art—a form of cultural resistance—and hopes that it will increase global awareness in documenting the lived experiences of Palestinians. Trained in video art and painting, Emad Badwan also has years of experience in photojournalism and as a cameraman and editor. In December 2024 he was selected to participate in the Gaza Biennale where he presented a short film in Gaza: Live Broadcast. The film depicts the day-to-day struggles of reporters on the ground; from achieving connectivity to the most basic necessities of human existence, all while being a moving target under the continuous dystopian sound of drones. He intends to direct another documentary and produce more mixed-media art to convey his ideas while documenting the ongoing tragedy. Exploring themes of humanity through various mediums was always his main ambition as both an artist and a journalist.

Yahya Abdel Salam Alsholy studied Arabic language and literature. He began his career in 2017 with a short fictional film that won a local award, followed by a short documentary, Dreams and Barriers. He received intensive training in directing and video art with Asmaa Bseiso and Mohammad Harb, which led him to produce a video art piece titled 10 Seconds, exhibited in numerous galleries, and later Reflection, after a workshop with Raed Ibrahim. He has won several awards and participated in the Covid Art exhibition. His home in northern Gaza was destroyed during the war, and he lost all the film materials he was working on. He currently lives in a tent in Deir al-Balah and works in producing photojournalistic reports, aspiring to return to video art despite the challenges he faces.

Farah Barqawi is a Palestinian writer, educator, performer, and a feminist organizer. She works across multiple genres and mediums, from written words, to podcasts, singing, and theatrical performances. Her poetry and prose have appeared in multiple languages, both online and in print. She holds a master’s degree in public policy from University of Chicago and an MFA in creative nonfiction writing from New York University. Farah is also a full spectrum birth doula in training. She lives in New York City, where she strives to connect with her communities and get involved in the causes she is passionate about.

Omar Berrada is a writer and curator whose work focuses on the politics of translation and intergenerational transmission. He is the author of the poetry collection Clonal Hum (2020), and the editor or co-editor of several books, including Album - Cinémathèque de Tanger, a multilingual volume about film in Tangier and Tangier on film (2012); The Africans, on racial dynamics in North Africa (2016); La Septième Porte, a posthumously published history of Moroccan cinema by Ahmed Bouanani (2020); and Another Room to Live In: 15 Contemporary Arab Poets(2024). Berrada was born and raised in Casablanca and currently lives in New York.

For more information, contact [email protected].

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