And Still, It Remains

Synopsis

'And still, it remains' tells the story of Mertoutek, a village nestled in the Hoggar Mountains of Algeria’s Southern Sahara and home to the Escamaran community of Black Algerians. Surrounded by ancient rock art, the area was also the site of French nuclear bombs between 1961-66 and continues to suffer the consequences of radioactive fallout circulating in the water and soil. Summoning the landscape as a witness and protagonist; experiences of French nuclear experiments, faith and justice are narrated by the voices of multiple residents. By affording the residents distance from the lens, the film also pushes against forms of visual capture that reproduce a colonial gaze and challenges visibility as the currency for political redress. Winds migrating across the Sahara have recently carried sand containing nuclear remains back to France - a reminder that the environmental afterlives of colonialism cannot be contained or forgotten.

Director Biography

Arwa Aburawa is an artist filmmaker based in London. Her work explores race and nature. She also runs a community film programme and film school as part of her work with ‘Other Cinemas’, a project she co-founded with Turab Shah, which aims to support and showcase the work of black and non-white artists. Turab Shah is a filmmaker and director of photography who holds an MA in Cinematography from Met Film School. Turab has a special interest in the legacies of colonialism and his films include ”Extradition’ which followed Talha Ahsan and Babar Ahmad’s battle against extradition to the US and ‘Zones of Non-Being’, a film which looks at Guantanamo through the lens of coloniality.