This podcast explores the role of cinema in times of political catastrophe

Like many people across the world, writer and Shasha Movies founder Róisín Tapponi primarily experienced the 2011 Egyptian revolution through the lens of a camera phone. That January, grainy handheld footage of young people protesting in the streets flooded free video-sharing sites like YouTube, representing a relatively new and widespread way to disseminate information and counter official state narratives. And at the heart of this effort was a non-profit organisation, Mosireen Collective, working to collect, save, and spread the videos, and provide training and equipment to keep documenting, even as the internet went dark.

“They’re probably one of the most revolutionary film collectives of the 21st century,” Tapponi says, and laid the groundwork for much of the unmediated citizen journalism we see today in places like Gaza and Lebanon. “They really marked a cultural reset in how we think about not only the production of images, but the distribution of them, and what it means to disseminate images in a political way.”

Jasmina Metwaly, a filmmaker and member of Mosireen Collective based between Cairo and Berlin, joins Tapponi in the first episode of the new Shasha Podcast, produced by Shasha’s Isabella Barkett, to talk about the formation of the collective and its lasting impact on the journalistic landscape. The conversation is just part of a broader season based around influential grassroots film collectives, she explains, with other episodes focusing on Sudan Film Factory, Chute Film-Coop, Kimiā Collective, Contemporary Image Collective, Les Chicas de La Pensée, and the Palestine research group Subversive Films.

Tapponi, now 25, founded Shasha in 2020, building upon her 2016-founded Habibi Collective. As an independent streaming service for South-West Asian and North African (SWANA) cinema, it hosts films by Meriem Bennani, Noor Abed, Jamil McGinnis, and many more. Online, they’re accessible in their original languages (with English subtitles) to watch anywhere in the world, offering an independent alternative to the sanitised spaces cooked up by Big Tech. IRL, Shasha’s “nomadic film clubs” host sold-out screenings across several continents, with monthly viewings in Marrakesh and Baghdad.

Shasha is run by a small team of women from SWANA backgrounds and, most importantly, it remains totally independent. Most of the people involved are also young, driven by genuine concerns about what kind of world they’re moving toward. “We need to start asking questions and having conversations about our own future,” she adds. “And that includes filmmaking.” The ongoing hope for the Shasha Podcast is that it can create the conditions for these conversations to take place, even as they’re shut down or censored across mainstream social media platforms and traditional news outlets. Below, Tapponi tells us more.

Where does the new podcast fit into the broader Shasha Movies project?

Róisín Tapponi: I love listening to film podcasts. But there’s a lack of podcasts speaking about films from the SWANA region, and the people that I want to platform. I’m in certain spaces where I’m around celebrities all the time, but the people in the [Shasha] podcast are the people that I really look up to. They’re the people who really inspire me, and who I find most aspirational. The Mosireen Collective alone… they gave people footage directly from people on the ground, not people heavily kitted out in safety gear, standing a mile away. They were really there. They were in the protests. It was really radical. The Sudan Film Factory… the woman I spoke to was still in Sudan. There were the sounds of war in the background. [You] recognise the urgency, the real necessity, to teach people how to use cameras on the streets, to document what’s happening, but also the archival impulse, in a place that’s literally being destroyed in front of your eyes.

All of these people, and I can use examples from all of the guests, I just find them all so deeply inspiring. They’ve all changed how we think about film, politics, video art, all of it, in such a tangible way.

The Sudan Film Factory interview took place in Sudan. There were the sounds of war in the background. You recognise the urgency to teach people to use cameras, to document what’s happening… in a place that’s literally being destroyed in front of your eyes – Róisín Tapponi

Listening to the collectives speak, there’s a real sense that filmmaking has a direct and vital presence in their lives.

Róisín Tapponi: Yeah. The direct experience of an oppressive political system, and the production of culture, and the resulting acts of protest are all so deeply interconnected. The politics of their work comes from its means of production, and it’s not something representational or figurative in their work. They’re not in working in Hollywood studios making a period drama about a historical event. The content of the film is very much derived from the politics they’re experiencing and dealing with.

And formally, there’s so many interesting innovations amongst these filmmakers. The films on Shasha are also just really great films. I never work with films just because they have a certain message or political [stance]. If a film isn’t a great film, I’m not going to screen it.

Courtesy of Shasha

Each conversation also presents different ways to structure a film community or film education that listeners might not be familiar with.

Róisín Tapponi: Kimiā Collective, one of the collectives I interviewed, teach kids in southern Morocco, who don’t have access to film school or workshops, how to develop film using local vegetation, like cacti. It blew my mind. And the two founders made a makeshift darkroom when they were maybe 12 or 13. That nature of play, but also using what is readily available and accessible… it’s a different universe to the film schools we have in the West. It’s so much more creative. There’s a whole generation of people who are learning about making films in totally different ways.

Did you find that these experiments with film remained at the forefront, even in places with a dangerous and very serious political backdrop?

Róisín Tapponi: That’s just the nature of being from where we’re from. Things don’t stop. Shit’s always hitting the fan. A real mentor and friend is Joana Hadjithomas, and she works with her husband, Khalil Joreige. After the Lebanese civil war in the 70s, they built the Cinematheque in Beirut, them and their friends rebuilt the whole creative scene. Right now, they’re opening this incredibly ambitious cinema in Beirut. The resilience to keep on building, after all of this trauma…

Courtesy of Kimiā Collective, via Shasha

And, as you mentioned, a sense of play is also a big part of that?

Róisín Tapponi: You need humour. So many of these films are so funny. Even right now, some of the memes people are making… play and humour is a part of [dealing] with it. It can’t all be doom and gloom. You need to live.

A lot of these filmmakers and collectives use humour as a safer way to talk about their anti-establishment politics as well, which could be dangerous to discuss openly in many cases. How did you navigate that in the podcast?

Róisín Tapponi: [We were] really sensitive to making sure that none of these people are put in danger by a conversation. Lives are not worth being risked over a conversation. I’ve never once endangered the life of a filmmaker, and that’s through doing a lot of labour to make sure that happens, and that they feel safe, and that they feel supported. The way we navigated that through the podcast was mainly editing, for people who are still in their countries, things that they said that could potentially put them in danger.

We’re in a crisis with cinema right now, whereas these people are thinking outside the box, constantly – Róisín Tapponi

What’s the main thing that you hope younger or aspiring filmmakers might take away from these conversations, in South West Asia and North Africa, or internationally?

Róisín Tapponi: I think these conversations are so universal. While the people in the podcast are from a specific geography, it’s applicable globally. And because of the huge generosity of the filmmakers – and the archivists, researchers, curators and everyone involved – there are many different things to take away. For me, what was inspiring was being exposed to so many different ways of working. We’re in a crisis with cinema right now, whereas these people are thinking outside the box, constantly, not just about how to make films, but how to show films, and archive films.

Right now, there’s lots of conversations about what’s going on in Gaza and Beirut, like: ‘How can we make images during this period?’ But these people can teach us so many lessons about that, because that’s just part of their every day. They’re always making, they’re always being creative in ongoing times of political catastrophe.

Listen to the Shasha Podcast here. Episodes are pre-recorded, and might not accurately represent current events.