Screening Program:
Being-with-place
Salt Beyoğlu
August 1, 2026 14.00
![Into The Maw Of The Spectacle Still 1 Hd <i>Into the Maw of the Spectacle</i> [Gösterinin Derinliklerine Doğru] (2025) filminden bir kare
©Laila Hida](/directus/media/thumbnails/into-the-maw-of-the-spectacle_still-1-hd-png-780-5000-false.jpg)
Still from Into the Maw of the Spectacle (2025)
©Laila Hida
©Laila Hida
Walk-in Cinema
Breaking Through a Dam at Salt Beyoğlu contemplates forms of “being‑with‑place” beyond colonialist practices across a geography spanning the Eastern Mediterranean and the Gulf region. The exhibition centers on the relationship between landscape, memory, and archives, envisioning a collective ground for existing in pursuit of transgeographical solidarities.
Organized in parallel to the exhibition, this one-day screening program brings together seven works by four artists: Cihad Caner, Valentin Noujaïm, Nour Ouayda, and Laila Hida. Carrying the memories and narratives of elsewhere into the here, the films continue the line of inquiry opened up by the exhibition.
The free-admission program will begin at 14.00 on August 1, and the films will be screened consecutively in their original language with English and Turkish subtitles.
PROGRAM
(Re)membering the riots in Afrikaanderwijk in 1972 or guest, host, ghos-ti, Cihad Caner, 2023–2024, 44’
Cihad Caner’s work focuses on the memory of Afrikaanderwijk, a neighbourhood in Rotterdam where riots targeting guest workers took place in 1972. The film raises questions about how one remembers, how collective memory is shaped, and the nuances and divergences of individual recollections. It engages with re-enactment as a method of recalling the past and as a means of reclaiming forgotten narratives, allowing multiple perspectives to be acknowledged and woven together.
Pacific Club, Valentin Noujaïm, 2023, 16’
To Exist Under Permanent Suspicion, Valentin Noujaïm, 2024, 14’
Demons to Diamonds, Valentin Noujaïm, 2025, 29’
Valentin Noujaïm’s La Défense trilogy explores the historical, political, and affective layers of La Défense, the business district of Paris. The first chapter of the trilogy, Pacific Club, follows the forgotten story of the first nightclub for the Arab community, which opened in La Défense in 1979, and recounts the dreams of a generation through a parallel world of dance, sweat, and love. The second film, To Exist Under Permanent Suspicion, follows the businesswoman Claire as she promotes a new skyscraper from her office in La Défense and gradually slips into a dreamlike state, haunted by visions of violence, isolation, and horror. In the final chapter, Demons to Diamonds, a series of suicides unfolds among the skyscrapers, heightening the atmosphere of fear and paranoia. As the city starts to collapse, its hidden underside—both what happens underground and the deeper fractures within society—comes into view.
The Secret Garden, Nour Ouayda, 2023, 27’
The film follows the inhabitants of a city who wake one morning to find unfamiliar trees, plants, and flowers suddenly sprung up throughout the streets and squares. As Camelia and Nahla investigate the origins of these peculiar creatures, mysterious events begin to unfold, transforming the city into an uncanny, dreamlike landscape.
Into the Maw of the Spectacle, Laila Hida, 2024, 16’
Sange Khara, Laila Hida, 2025, 10’
Laila Hida’s ongoing research project Le Voyage du Phoenix explores how the aesthetics and knowledge of the desert have been constructed and disseminated, and how myths and desires have shaped orientalist representations of it. One outcome of this research, Into the Maw of the Spectacle, follows a group of artists on an expedition through a territory marked by ancient histories and trans-Saharan routes, weaving together the stories of a tour guide and the conversations between participants. In another chapter of her research, Sange Khara, Hida brings together fragments of memory, everyday life, and references to films such as Wanderers of the Desert (1984) and The Sheltering Sky (1990). The work explores how cinema, tourism, and colonial travel writing have shaped visions of the desert, the oasis, and the people who inhabit them.
Breaking Through a Dam at Salt Beyoğlu contemplates forms of “being‑with‑place” beyond colonialist practices across a geography spanning the Eastern Mediterranean and the Gulf region. The exhibition centers on the relationship between landscape, memory, and archives, envisioning a collective ground for existing in pursuit of transgeographical solidarities.
Organized in parallel to the exhibition, this one-day screening program brings together seven works by four artists: Cihad Caner, Valentin Noujaïm, Nour Ouayda, and Laila Hida. Carrying the memories and narratives of elsewhere into the here, the films continue the line of inquiry opened up by the exhibition.
The free-admission program will begin at 14.00 on August 1, and the films will be screened consecutively in their original language with English and Turkish subtitles.
PROGRAM
(Re)membering the riots in Afrikaanderwijk in 1972 or guest, host, ghos-ti, Cihad Caner, 2023–2024, 44’
Cihad Caner’s work focuses on the memory of Afrikaanderwijk, a neighbourhood in Rotterdam where riots targeting guest workers took place in 1972. The film raises questions about how one remembers, how collective memory is shaped, and the nuances and divergences of individual recollections. It engages with re-enactment as a method of recalling the past and as a means of reclaiming forgotten narratives, allowing multiple perspectives to be acknowledged and woven together.
Pacific Club, Valentin Noujaïm, 2023, 16’
To Exist Under Permanent Suspicion, Valentin Noujaïm, 2024, 14’
Demons to Diamonds, Valentin Noujaïm, 2025, 29’
Valentin Noujaïm’s La Défense trilogy explores the historical, political, and affective layers of La Défense, the business district of Paris. The first chapter of the trilogy, Pacific Club, follows the forgotten story of the first nightclub for the Arab community, which opened in La Défense in 1979, and recounts the dreams of a generation through a parallel world of dance, sweat, and love. The second film, To Exist Under Permanent Suspicion, follows the businesswoman Claire as she promotes a new skyscraper from her office in La Défense and gradually slips into a dreamlike state, haunted by visions of violence, isolation, and horror. In the final chapter, Demons to Diamonds, a series of suicides unfolds among the skyscrapers, heightening the atmosphere of fear and paranoia. As the city starts to collapse, its hidden underside—both what happens underground and the deeper fractures within society—comes into view.
The Secret Garden, Nour Ouayda, 2023, 27’
The film follows the inhabitants of a city who wake one morning to find unfamiliar trees, plants, and flowers suddenly sprung up throughout the streets and squares. As Camelia and Nahla investigate the origins of these peculiar creatures, mysterious events begin to unfold, transforming the city into an uncanny, dreamlike landscape.
Into the Maw of the Spectacle, Laila Hida, 2024, 16’
Sange Khara, Laila Hida, 2025, 10’
Laila Hida’s ongoing research project Le Voyage du Phoenix explores how the aesthetics and knowledge of the desert have been constructed and disseminated, and how myths and desires have shaped orientalist representations of it. One outcome of this research, Into the Maw of the Spectacle, follows a group of artists on an expedition through a territory marked by ancient histories and trans-Saharan routes, weaving together the stories of a tour guide and the conversations between participants. In another chapter of her research, Sange Khara, Hida brings together fragments of memory, everyday life, and references to films such as Wanderers of the Desert (1984) and The Sheltering Sky (1990). The work explores how cinema, tourism, and colonial travel writing have shaped visions of the desert, the oasis, and the people who inhabit them.
