1002nd night : des récits infectés

The 18/11/2022 from 19:00 to 21:00

With Adam Khalil, Bayley Sweitzer and Samir Ramdani

« The 1002nd night » is a series of screenings and meetings with artists conceived in connection with the exhibition Scheherazade, at night. The first session brings together the films Nosferasta: First bite (2021) by Adam Khalil and Bayley Sweitzer and La Cellule (2020) by Samir Ramdani. From a group of children with strange powers taking control after a devastating pandemic to Christopher Columbus becoming a vampire crossing time to bring his new colonial world to fruition, these two films play with the codes of genre cinema with a jubilant formal and narrative inventiveness. Echoing recent events, their “récits infectés” address the relationships of domination, inequality and systemic racism in our society by proposing new ways of writing History.

The screenings will be followed by a discussion between the directors Adam Khalil and Samir Ramdani and Yoann Gourmel, curator of the exhibition Scheherazade, at night.

Nosferasta: First bite (2021) by Adam Khalil and Bayley Sweitzer

Spanning 500 years of colonial destruction, Nosferasta tells the story of Oba, a Rastafarian vampire, and Christopher Columbus, Oba’s original biter, as they spread the colonial infection throughout the “new world”. Formally a vampire film and series of installations, the stylistically impressionistic Nosferasta examines the guilt of being complicit in imperial conquest, while also acknowledging the difficulty of unlearning centuries of vampiric conditioning. At its core Nosferasta asks, how can you decolonize what’s in your blood?

33 minutes long

Credits

Directors – Adam Kahlil and Bayley Sweitzer
Co-Writer and Executive Producer – Oba
Producer – Anne Alexander
Director of Photography – Alex Ashe
Wardrobe – Kindall Almond
Casting – Geraldine Baron + Salome Oggenfuss
Editing – Bayley Sweitzer + Adam Khalil
Music Composition – Leila Bordreuil + Doug Hock

Featuring
Christopher Columbus – Jack Sochet
Diego – Jerry Angelo
Young Oba – Adam Rashad Glenn
Arawak Friend – Sa Mii Sanchez
+
Oba
Sarah Kerr
Stephen Holmgren

Nosferasta is commissioned and produced by Gasworks, London, and Spike Island, Bristol, as part of the European Cooperation project 4Cs: From Conflict to Conviviality through Creativity and Culture, co-funded by Creative Europe and the Royal College of Art. The film is also supported by Creative Capital and Cinereach.

La Cellule (2020) by Samir Ramdani

Today, it’s the apocalypse. And it’s at Charles Peguy high school that the future of the world is being decided: a group of children with strange powers are taking matters into their own hands.

50 minutes long

Credits

Produced as part of the Orange Rouge workshops, curated by Barbara Siriex and Corinne Digard.

Fantastic fiction / 50 min / colour HD video, stereo sound / 2020.