Watch a recording of the workshop with filmmaker Saeed Taji Farouky about storytelling practices for decolonising documentary. Within broader conversations around ‘decolonising the lens’ in cinema, Saeed discussed how to tell stories that foreground marginalised voices and how to experiment with new narrative structures in order to deconstruct an (often oppressive) historical narrative, and establish new ones.
Saeed Taji Farouky is a Palestinian-British filmmaker and educator who has been making films around themes of conflict, human rights, and post-colonialism since 1998. His latest documentary, A Thousand Fires, was the opening film in the Locarno Film Festival’s Critics Week 2021 and won the Marco Zucchi award for Most Innovative Documentary. His previous documentary, Tell Spring Not to Come This Year, premiered at Berlinale 2015, won the Audience Choice Panorama award and Amnesty International Human Rights Award, and was selected for over 40 international film festivals and awarded Best Documentary 4 times.
His first short fiction They Live in Forests, They Are Extremely Shy (2016) was broadcast on Channel 4’s Random Acts, and won Best Short Drama at the Royal Television Society Awards (North East and Boarder), and he’s currently developing his first feature fiction film Soon We Will All Be History Here with Torino Script Lab 2021.
Farouky is also the designer and lead tutor of the radical SLG film school, a free alternative film course supporting people from backgrounds underrepresented in the industry and dedicated to developing a new generation of creative and engaged moving image artists.
