Shop
Join us for Night School’s annual film programme curated by Hind Mezaina. This year’s five short films explore how neighbourhoods and other places endure over time. Change comes by way of property markets, political erasure, and the whim of human interest. What’s gone, what’s remembered, what will be?
The screening will be followed by a discussion between Hind Mezaina and Todd Reisz, with audience participation.
Constant Adjustment is part of Night School 2026 | Pardon Our Progress, a five-week program of seminars and public events led by Todd Reisz and dedicated to encounters with urbanism and history in Dubai. Learn more about the programme here.
The event is free and open to all. Please confirm your attendance by registering here.
Film Programme:
Wunderland Kalkar (Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoin, 2024, 5 min.)
Wunderland Kalkar is an amusement park built at a former nuclear power station along the Rhine River in Germany. The project was completed in 1985, one year before the Chernobyl disaster. After thirteen years of construction and under pressure from local interest groups, the delayed opening was finally cancelled in 1991. What to do with an infrastructure now made obsolete but far too massive to be dismantled? Presented at Bozar, Brussels (2024–Jan 2025), the film is part of the filmmakers’ nine-part series Transmutation, which centres around the ongoing transformation of matter and landscape in northwestern Europe.
Al Basateen / The Orchards (Antoine Chapon, 2025, 25 min.)
In 2015, in Damascus, the Basateen al-Razi district and its orchards were razed to the ground as punishment for the population’s uprising against the regime. Having lost everything, two former residents recall their neighborhood.
Okay Keskidee! Let Me See Inside (Rhea Storr, 2025, 19 min.)
A personal account of Black community spaces in the UK, focusing on Caribbean diaspora. By visiting the site of the former Keskidee Centre that is now luxury apartments, the film considers the conditions which allowed this historical space to thrive. The film explores the reasons why gathering in physical space is difficult because of the premium cost of space and the often free labour or government funding needed, all of which are scarce. Can the digital realm replace a physical community presence and produce an accessible archive for a new generation?
The Architect of Luxor (Jocelyn Saab, 1986, 18 min.)
The architect and philosopher Olivier Sednaoui, disciple of Hassan Fathi, explains how he built his mud-brick house, which brings together the infinitely small and the infinitely huge, as the Egyptians did in the age of the pharaohs. This form of harmony, largely forgotten by the end of the twentieth century, is what Sednaoui is trying to rediscover. He explains the project from the moulding of the very first mud brick to the life philosophy on which it is based: placing East and West under one single destiny.
Bad for a Moment (Daniel Soares, 2025, 15 min.)
A team-building event goes wrong and brings the owner of an architect studio face-to-face with the lower-class neighbourhood that his company is gentrifying.
Hind Mezaina is an artist, film curator and writer from Dubai. Her interests lie in cinema, cities, visual culture, collective memory and archives. As an artist she works primarily in analogue photography and lately in moving image. Her work has been shown at art institutions and film festivals including Sharjah Biennal 13, locally and internationally. As a film curator, she has programmed film screenings and moderated talks for institutions in the UAE including 421 Arts Campus, Louvre Abu Dhabi, Sharjah Art Foundation, Alliance Française and Jameel Arts Centre. In 2009 she founded The Culturist, where you can find her writings about arts and culture in Dubai and beyond. In 2022 she launched The Culturist Film Club hosted at various venues across Dubai. www.hindmezaina.com
Film synopses: Courtesy of filmmakers or their estates.
Images: Stills from Al Basateen, The Architect of Luxor and Bad for a Moment, courtesy of the filmmakers.
