Peacock Visual Arts is the main contemporary visual arts organisation in Aberdeen and the North-east of Scotland and is supported by Aberdeen City Council and the Scottish Arts Council.
Cruel Weather. Film: Ashura
04 November
[Ashura, Jala Toufic, 80min, 2002]
- Wednesday 4 November
- Peacock Visual Arts
- Starts 7pm
- Entry Free
In memory of the 680 A.D. slaughter of Al-Husayn, the grandson of the prophet Muhammad, a yearly commemoration of ‘Âshûrâ’ takes place in Lebanon. In Jalal Toufic’s rigorous video [Âshûrâ’: This Blood Spilled in My Veins], footage of the accompanying rituals are intercut with related blessings and prayers, as well as lamentations and elegiac music, all presented in extended takes with no commentary.
To these events are added recorded interviews with Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida, and a classroom lecture by the filmmaker himself. Without directly addressing ‘Âshûrâ’, their considerations open up our experience of the commemoration. One of the final scenes takes place at the end of the ten-day ceremony when participants lacerate themselves with swords. This act helps maintain the memory not only of the past, but of the future, in particular the promise to await the redeemer, the twelfth Imam. Hovering between a theoretical exploration and an ethnographic documentation, between excess and minimalism, ‘Âshûrâ’ is a fascinating examination of the relationship between rituals, memory, and history. - Kathy Geritz, Associate Film Curator, Pacific Film Archive