What: Public PhD defense by Dalia AlKury, PhD fellow in the program "Ph.d. in artistic research for film and related audiovisual art forms" at the Norwegian Film School, Faculty of Film, TV and Games at Innland University of Applied Sciences.
Title of the artistic PhD result: "Imagining Liberation"
When: Friday September 27th 2024 11:00 – 16:00
Where: The Norwegian Film School, Oslo campus: Myrens Verksted 6F (entrance from Akerselva)
Still from "What if a tree? What if a crow?" by D. AlKury / generated by AI artist Rezan Ærdem
Imagining Liberation is a practice-based artistic research project with the aim of investigating methods in speculative nonfiction. This project begins with a question: What kind of cinematic images can arise from imagining a liberated Palestine?
Dalia AlKury’s interest in staging simulated pasts in her earlier documentaries and then staging speculations of futures during her PhD practice based research, stems from a deep frustration with the lack of art imagining a world that she hopes is possible. Both practices—staging in documentary and speculative fiction—are deeply rooted in posing the question “What if?,” to offer another possible world or narrative. Her work combines these approaches in the realization of her own method in speculative multitemporal nonfiction.
The final artistic results of Dalia's PhD research are informed by grievances over the historical and present day witnessing of settler–colonial violence and ethnic cleansing of her people, as well as by personal lived experiences of the loss of a homeland.
By staging her own fictional return to a liberated Palestine in different modes from writing to filming, Dalia runs into ethical dilemmas questioning her self-censorship, representation of “others” and the role of cinematic catharsis. Throughout her artistic research she has created short films, video diaries and narrative experiments.
About the defense
The dissertation defence starts at 11 AM at The Norwegian Film School at Myrens Verksted in Oslo. Prior to the defence, the short films, video diaries and narrative experiments. which the defence is based upon, will be screened at 10 AM
The evaluation committee consists of:
- First opponent: Mia Engberg, filmmaker with a Ph.D. from Stockholm konsnärliga högskola.
- Second opponent: Kareem Estefan, Assistant professor, Department of history of Art, Cambridge University.
- Third opponent/administrator: Max Kestner, filmmaker.
Dissertation chair: Leif Holst Jensen, Dean at the faculty FTVS, HINN.
Candidate's main supervisor: Lotte Mik-Meyer, Professor The Norwegian Film School, HINN.
Co-supervisor: Arild Andresen, Professor The Norwegian Film School, FTVS, HINN.
About Dalia AlKury
Dalia AlKury is a PhD candidate at The Norwegian Film School. She is an acclaimed film director whose work navigates cross-genre storytelling. Her films explore the resilience and political unconscious of the everyday hero in the Arab World and has been shown at IDFA and other festivals around the world. She holds an MA from Goldsmiths, University of London and will defend her PhD at The Norwegian Film School on September 27th 2024. Imagining Liberation is her artistic PhD research project and the short film "Levitation" which was part of the research was selected for this year´s Norwegian Short Film Festival in Grimstad.
