Zineb Sedira

As part of the cycle Songs, images, dances, and sounds: acts of liberation, programmed by the Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian and curated by Olivier Hadouchi, Batalha presents two screenings dedicated to Zineb Sedira. An artist of Algerian descent born in France and living in England, Sedira focuses her practice on themes such as identity, memory, and displacement. Based on the exhibition Zineb Sedira. Standing Here Wondering Which Way to Go, presented at Gulbenkian, the program focuses on the anti-colonial liberation struggles of the 1960s and 1970s, bringing together a constellation of films that affirm and evoke the cultural and political resistance of peoples to their subjugation. At Batalha, Gillo Pontecorvo's La battaglia di Algeri (1966) and Zineb Sedira's Dreams Have No Titles (2022) will be screened in dialogue with films by Isaac Juilian and Mohand Ali-Yahia. The former, a landmark of political cinema, recreates with almost documentary intensity the Algerian people's struggle against French occupation, remaining an essential reference point for anti-colonial thought. Sedira's film — conceived for the French Pavilion at the Venice Biennale — revisits La battaglia di Algeri and other militant works, intertwining personal, historical, and cinematic memory in a gesture of reflection on the legacy, impasses, and dreams of liberation struggles.

Curated by Olivier Hadouchi
Program developed in partnership with CAM — Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian