Photos And Highlights From The Culturist Film Club x Jameel’s Summer Cinema 2026
The 2nd edition of The Culturist’s Film Club collaboration with Jameel Arts Centre for its Summer Cinema Programme ended on August 15.
The bi-weekly Saturday screenings started on June 20 and all five films had a great turnout. I was also happy to see a diverse audience (age, nationalities, professions), and happier for the thoughtful discussions about the films - with them and the invited guest speakers. Especially when there were opposing opinions for some of the films. It meant people were really engaged with what they were watching, and stayed back for the post screening discussions to participate and share their thoughts. This is why film screenings in cinemas and institutions remain important - it creates collective reactions and feelings that can’t be replicated or experienced when watching alone at home.
Huge thanks to Jameel Arts Centre, especially to Qutouf Elobaid for inviting me back and trusting me with my film selection and making space for these screenings. Thanks to Yazan Yacoub for his technical support, and thanks Dina Al Khatib for designing these posters. and for the rest of the team for printing and displaying them at the centre.
Also thanks to the filmmakers/distributors for letting let us show their films, and to all the guest speakers who agreed to discuss the films with me. Just as I did for last year’s edition, this post is to share photos and highlights from each screening. All the photos during the screenings were taken by me on my iPhone from the back of the room, and photos of the talks were taken by my brother Khalid Mezaina, so a big thanks to him too (I’ve credited him accordingly below).
But before the photos, I’m sharing a short unpublished interview with me about the film program. I’ve yet to hear back on why it wasn’t published. I won’t name and shame the publication, but it’s another example (of which I have many) of the unprofessionalism and inadequate state of cultural journalism in this town. Since I spent time thinking about and writing my answers, thought best to share it here.
What was the driving philosophy behind weaving such distinct eras and cinematic forms into a single programme?
It is an opportunity to screen a variety of film genres that don’t normally get shown here. All the titles I selected have been screened, a few have been awarded, at notable international film festivals, and they vary from personal to experimental storytelling and one old fashioned melodrama.
This year’s lineup include feature length films that range from a sci-fi about love, memories and technology (Memory of Princess Mumbi), a documentary about one person’s unconventional experimentations into the human and animal consciousness in America during 1950-70s (John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office), a desktop documentary about how we engage with images and news about violence and power (Afterlives), a film essay about collective memory told through Lebanon’s history in cinema and pop culture made entirely of archival footage and images (Do You Love Me), and I always like to include at least one classic Arab film to share its history and to introduce it to an audience who may have never watched a classic film from the Arab region on a big screen (The Blazing Sun).
How do you see stories rooted in specific historical or speculative contexts resonating with the multicultural community of Dubai today?
Watching films helps me make sense of the world, and I hope whoever attends will feel the same way, and normally I do see a multicultural and multigenerational audience attending these screenings. I think many of us are grappling with difficult political, social and ethical questions related to current times - from regional conflicts, fragmented media, prejudiced narratives, fake news, AI, increased reliance on technology instead of human interaction. I believe the films as well as the post screening discussions with the invited guest speakers will help us unpack these questions together.
A significant part of your curatorial vision focuses on how histories are preserved and what is lost when records disappear, particularly highlighted in films like Do You Love Me. How does independent cinema serve as a vital counter-archive for cultural memory in the region.
Cinema is a record of the times they are made - whether it's an independent or a big studio film. Cultural and collective memory in the region is expansive and complicated, and cinema can play a role in shedding light on hidden or forgotten histories. But it can also confront audiences and pose questions about who controls what gets recorded and what remains in the history books.
June 20, 2026
Film: Memory of Princess Mumbi (Damien Hauser, 2025)
Guest speaker: Amirah Tajdin
The discussion started off with an assessment of the film, and Amirah shared her thoughts on what worked and didn’t in its storytelling and filmmaking. We also discussed memories, AI, Afrofuturism, and the (mis) representation of place and people in films. I liked hearing what the audiences agreed and disagreed with was said, and their own thoughts on the film. Overall, I think it was a good start and it set the tone for the rest of the film series.
Photos 5-6 by Khalid Mezaina.
July 04, 2026
Film: John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office (Michael Almereyda & Courtney Stephens, 2025)
Guest Speaker: Rebecca Crookshank
Rebecca joined me for the David Lynch event last summer, and I was happy to invite her back. This time she joined us online because she was in Vietnam at the time working on a project.
Our talking points included institutional control and obedience, and the normalisation of crossing ethical lines in government and military institutions. We also linked themes of the film to present times - the distrust of news, how the algorithm on social media is another form of mind control, and responsible for creating fragmented bubbles of interest.
Not many people in the audience were fans of John Lilly after watching the film, and was happy they shared their opposing thoughts on the film.
After the talk, I played this music video for Jane Wiedlin’s Rush Hour (1988) featuring her swimming with dolphins, and confessed I had a bit of an obsession with dolphins during my teenage years.
July 18, 2026
Film: Afterlives (Kevin B. Lee, 2025)
Guest Speaker: Kevin Jones
I’ve worked with Kevin Jones before on a project about visual literacy, so he was the only speaker I had in mind for this film.
Our talking points included the form of the film, a “desktop film” that extends outside the screen, trusting the voice of narrator, the distrust of images and news in the media, selective empathy, the manosphere, and our relationship and interactions with computers, phone screens.
I was amused there was a cat in this film, so I had to include it in the slideshow of the film stills that was on a loop during the talk.
Photos 6-8 by Khalid Mezaina.
August 01, 2026
Film: Do You Love Me (Lana Daher, 2025)
Guest Speaker: Yalda Bidshahri
I first saw this last September during the Venice Film Festival and wrote a few words about it here. During this second viewing of it, the montage of dancing clips paired with Dalida’s song Monday, Tuesday... Laissez-moi danser (Let Me Dance) from 1979 made my heart soar. Perfect editing. I also love this line from the song, “Laissez-moi danser, chanter en liberté, tout l'été” (Let me dance and sing, all summer long).
The talking points with Yalda included:
the use of personal archives vs national archives to make a film like this
the points of departure and return in different moments of the film
using found footage to capture collective feelings and memories vs telling a linear history of a place
Some audience members expressed feelings of catharsis after watching this film, others felt discomfort and questioned if the film sanitises war and violence. One member asked what do non Lebanese/Arabs in the audience feel or get from the film. A few responded expressing there was something in it that resonates.
Yalda and I also wondered what would a film about Dubai using audio visual archives look like, and what feelings it would capture. We agreed if it includes personal archives it would tell a different and diverse story compared to one relying on official and national archives only.
A cat appears in this film too, and you can see it in the last photo below.
All the stills I used for the slideshow during this talk were taken from www.doyouloveme.film which has an index of all the films and photos featured in it.
Photos 6-8 by Khalid Mezaina.
After the talk, I played the video for Do You Love Me by Bendaly Family from 1978. The song inspired the title of the film and you can hear it at the start of the film. For those who don’t know, the video was filmed in Kuwait.
Bonus video, the song by Dalida that I now wish I also played that night.
August 15, 2026
Film: The Blazing Sun | صراع في الوادي (Youssef Chahine, 1954)
Last summer I showed a short film by Youssef Chahine, Cairo, As Told By Chahine (1991), and this time was happy to show one of his features from the 1950s which is personally my favourite period of Chahine films (that also includes the 1960s).
I didn’t have a guest speaker for this. Instead, I did a short introduction before the screening, about the film and Chahine, and also a bit of history about the two lead actors in it, Faten Hamama and Omar Sharif, and about their romance, marriage and careers after this film. Based on the feedback I got, it went down very well and many asked for more of this. All I can say is from their mouth to the ears of the institution (or any institution interested in letting me do more of this).
All in all, enjoyable five weeks of watching films and having meaningful discussions with people. The constant feedback from each event was there should be more screenings. Here’s hoping.