Memory Jackets – A Screening Series From Queensland Film Festival and the Institute of Modern Art

Memory Jackets, a screening of three short films at Brisbane’s Institute of Modern Art, tethers historical dislocation to violence. Though the series, curated by Queensland Film Festival programmer John Edmond, was not planned to closely coincide with the 70th anniversary of Al Nakba (the mass 1948 expulsion of Palestinians from their land), the films selected gain new resonance in light of the horrific acts of violence perpetrated in Gaza this past week.

All three films are, on the surface, concerned with surveillance, and challenge the primacy of the image in documenting history. They provoke through acts of withdrawal — the first film lacks any soundtrack, the second any context, and the third any moving images. The elisions stunt any simple search for ‘truth’.