A selection of video-works from artists in Verdensrommet’s network
FREE ENTRY!
The film programme features videos exploring mobility, identity, and uprooting. The selection will be simultaneously screened in three venues:
@ BO (Rådhusgata 19 0158 Oslo).
@ Lydgalleriet (Strandgaten 195, 5004 Bergen).
@ Kunsthall Trondheim (Kongens gate 2, 7011 Trondheim).
Featuring video works by: Marin Shamov, Yu Shuk Pui Bobby, Patricia Carolina, Pouria Kazemi, Shahrzad Malekian, Sara Abbasnejad
HOUSE (excerpt) // Marin Shamov // 2025
House is a film about a queertrans feminist migrant community house consisting of ten people and more who have chosen to live together and share non-hierarchical, queerfeminist, antiracist, and anticapitalist views. The House that under one roof has brought together people with migrant and activist backgrounds who moved in Vienna because of hostile political regimes, war, and economic dispossession in their countries.
Vase Piece // Yu Shuk Pui Bobby // 2019
Vase Piece traces the process of how a “vase” is made, following its transformation from raw material into object. By focusing on the labour and care embedded in its creation, the work unfolds the story of one vase as both material form and metaphor. It reflects on fragility, containment, and the cultural weight of everyday objects, exploring how identity and memory can be shaped through acts of making.
Conversation with Dago // Patricia Carolina // 2024
This work includes material filmed in the sewage in Mexico City, while the audio registers an unplanned encounter and conversation with Dago Isaac, an informal-unsalaried worker who cleans the sewage and the streets in exchange of voluntary contributions from people in different neighborhoods.
Three Views Through the Stereoscope // Pouria Kazemi // 2025
Three Views Through the Stereoscope is a short documentary about strangers unintentionally captured behind the windows of buildings in urban photographic documentation from the late 19th to mid-20th century. A close examination of these archives often reveals the faces of individuals who were fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to be caught in the precise moment a photographer was documenting the city/event. In most cases, neither the photographer nor the strangers were aware of this accidental documentation. A closer look at these individuals raises various questions and patterns to study. Three of these topics are explored in the film through three separate chapters: first, the ethics of documentation; second, architecture and gender; and third, the distorted narrative on the fate of Syrian immigrant, Mazen Al Hamada.
Boundless Game // Shahrzad Malekian // 2015
Boundless Game is a video work developed during a residency at NKD (Nordic Artists’ Centre in Dale), shortly before my immigration to Norway. The piece stages a playful yet fragile negotiation of intimacy, gender, and relational dynamics in unfamiliar contexts. At its center is a wearable sculpture: two performers interact with the object, responding through movement. The work unfolds as a queer reflection on how bodies and roles are both normalized and disrupted through everyday gestures and encounters. Through humor, vulnerability, and the transformation of an ordinary object into an uncanny sculpture, the piece questions cultural expectations around gender, sexuality, and connection, while opening possibilities for reimagining relationships and shared space.
A Short Film About Stealing (In Norway) // Pouria Kazemi // 2024
As the title suggests, this is a short film about stealing. The events brought together here are situated between artistic and political action; they may be "criminal" but they echo human behaviour and need. This was an effort to investigate the notion of "Art beyond the law" and set out to address the income Inequality in Norway, which is the wealthiest country in Europe. Through the lens of absurdity and humour, A Short Film About Stealing set out to address the notion of criminal law and hopes to open the discussion about the legal structures regarding "petty theft".
Between Waves and Silence, Something Lingers (excerpt) // Sara Abbasnejad // 2025
Between Waves and Silence, Something Lingers is a poetic, research-based film essay that weaves together archival maps, family photographs, oral histories, and fragments of stories and literature to uncover Doob, once the largest brothel district in Iran, located in Abadan. This neighborhood, where many sex workers lived and worked, has been entirely erased from maps and from the city’s official history. Blending memory and speculation, the film explores how spaces of women’s lives were made invisible through urban planning, oil industry expansion, and archival silences. Through personal family narratives, gestures of disappearance, and the language of magic, the film reflects on uprooting, erasure, and the fragile traces that persist between visibility and invisibility.
Their eyes will sear holes in the night sky // Bianca Hisse and Laura Cemin // 2025
The film follows the practice of Al Huriya Dabke, a Palestinian dance group based in Finland. Its members include people from Palestine together with Finnish participants who have chosen to learn and carry forward the tradition of dancing dabke. Spanning different ages and backgrounds, the group gathers weekly in Helsinki to dance as an act of resistance in the face of ongoing erasure.
Dabke is a traditional line dance of the Levant, present across Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. Its variations differ in rhythm and style, yet all share a core ethos of unity. Dancers typically join hands or shoulders, forming a line or open circle — a gesture outward, always welcoming others in. For Palestinians, dabke has become more than celebration: it is a practice of endurance, a refusal to forget, and a living manifestation of a culture threatened by displacement and occupation.
The film documents the group’s rehearsal, showing how dabke is learned and transmitted across generations, languages, and different lived experiences of the dance. Alongside the powerful harmony of the choreography, the film draws attention to moments of translation and misinterpretation in learning the movements, showing how steps are modified and meanings reshaped through practice. The work reflects on how displacement challenges and transforms cultural practices, revealing dance as a dynamic, shared language that links people across places and backgrounds