Beast Type Song
This film is set against the science-fiction backdrop of a solar battle, as evoked by Etel Adnan in her poem The Arab Apocalypse. Just as Adnan uses drawings and symbols to communicate what cannot be expressed in words, so Sophia Al-Maria explores the revision of history through a new language of drawings, movement and music that gives voice to the speechless. Her protagonists reflect on the narratives and languages they have inherited, and the violence they have encountered, as children of colonial legacies. The resultant film serves as an escape route from dominant narratives of an oppressive past.
Sophia Al-Maria (b. 1983, Tacoma, Washington) is a Qatari-American artist, writer, and filmmaker living and working in London. Though her work spans many disciplines including drawing, collage, sculpture and film it is united by a preoccupation with the power of storytelling and myth, and in particular with imagining revisionist histories and alternative futures. Al-Maria has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Her works are in the public collections of Art Jameel, Dubai, Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah, Julia Stoschek Foundation, Berlin, LACMA, Los Angeles, LUMA Foundation, Arles, MATHAF, Doha, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, PCAI Collection, Athens, TATE, London, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Film translated by: Mariana Ramos
France / United Kingdom, 2019, 38’
Director: Sophia Al-Maria
