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Dead As A Dodo

Director: Leena Habiballa
Sudan, 5 minutes, 2022, experimental

Dead As A Dodo lays bare the settler colonial mythology at the heart of the popular narrative of the Dodo’s extinction. By drawing on archival material and the Dodo’s apparition the film performs a sensory haunting, reviving the spaces between life and death that have been shaped by settler violence into a value-forming exercise. This work is inspired by and is in conversation with a book of poems titled A Theory of Birds by the Palestinian-American poet Zaina Alsous.

Trigger warning: descriptions of violence towards birds
Film screening dates: 23.11.2024 — 8.12.2024
Close-up, portrait. A woman with long, fine brown braids and dark eyes gazes into the camera. She wears black attire, her neck is adorned with a rich blue scarf and a bold gold necklace featuring pearls. She stands against a backdrop of a white wall and a green plant with a vibrant red flower.
Director
Leena Habiballa is a cultural worker with an interest in Sudanese visual/material cultures and community filmmaking/exhibition models. She explores these themes through art/film criticism, research, and her own filmmaking practice. She is currently a member of the artist workers' cooperative not-nowhere and is the winner of the 2023 Michael O'Pray Prize.