Screening the Archive, at Annenstrasse 53,, looks at the Sudanese Film Group through an exhibition, film screenings, and a talk on post-independence Sudanese film. The Sudanese Film Group was founded in 1989 by a group of filmmakers (Ibrahim Shaddad, Eltayeb Mahdi, Suliman Elnour) who were among the first generation in Sudan who had studied cinema in film schools abroad. When they returned home, they worked in the Cinema Section of the Department of Culture in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when they also founded the journal Cinema, aiming to expand their engagement with the wider society. Turning their lens to the many economic and social changes their country was going through, these films are invaluable testimonies of a young Sudanese cinema tradition.

The program illustrates the vibrant cinematic landscape of Sudan in the 1970s and 1980s in which the group came together to produce these films despite the bureaucracy and the limited sponsorship of the state. Serving as crucial gathering spots for the urban communities, cinemas flourished at this time. This era ended abruptly with a military coup d’état in 1989, which annihilated the hopes for film production and screening; cinemas have since become desolate places. Screening the Archive reflects on the complex development of cinema in Sudan in this period.

Organizer: Abdelrahman Elbashir within the context of Verein Das Gesellschaftliche Ding. Kunst, Architektur und Öffentlichkeit

Artists: Suliman Elnour, Eltayeb Mahdi, Ibrahim Shaddad, Abdelrahman Elbashir

Link

https://2022.steirischerherbst.at/en/program/events/3810/annenstrasse-screening-the-archive