APR 16 • SCREENING + WRITING WORKSHOP

Join us on Wednesday April 16, 2025 at 7 pm to watch two award-winning Palestinian short films about agrarian heritage and reclaiming narratives: Where the Wind Blows (2024, 15’) by Hana Elias and The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing (2024, 17’) by Theo Panagopoulos.

Hana Elias and Aminah Al Huqail, will lead a post-screening creative writing workshop. The workshop will encourage the audience to take the story a step further, thinking about personal connections to agrarian heritage, finding a sense of botanical belonging, and exploring how that can root us in our activism.

The writing workshop is based off of a post screening book that has been circulating alongside the film asking three questions:

What is a tree that raised you?

If you could ask the soil a question, what would it be?

What are the roots of your resistance?

The Flowers Stood Silently Witnessing (2024, 17’) by Theo Panagopoulos

When a Palestinian filmmaker based in Scotland unearths a rarely-seen Scottish film archive of Palestinian wild flowers, he decides to reclaim the footage. This tender film essay questions the role of image-making as a tool of both testimony and violence when connected to entanglements between people and the land. The film recently won the Sundance Jury award for best short doc, and is BAFTA nominated.

Where the Wind Blows (2024, 15’) by Hana Elias

The movie is a meditative short documentary about one family’s ancestral ties to the olive tree. This film recently won best short documentary at the Arab Film Festival and is currently on the festival circuit.