Unseen. Unheard. Unarchived.
Other Cinemas (Arwa Aburawa and Turab Shah), And still, it remains, 2023 (film still).
upcoming
7 Nov
–
19 Dec
Other Cinemas and Friends
Enjoy is pleased to present Unseen. Unheard, Unarchived., an exhibition in the form of a two part film screening programme featuring work by Other Cinemas (Turab Shah and Arwa Aburawa), students from the Other Cinemas filmmaking programme, and artists connected to Aotearoa.
Other Cinemas’ and curator Hana Pera Aoake’s friendship and collaboration began in 2023. In this exhibition they continue their creative collaboration, which is rooted in shared political values and a desire to create spaces for gathering and sharing. Other Cinemas’ practice is centered around gathering through making films, sharing the work of others with their community, and running a free film school. Built upon a desire to use film as a tool to build community, connection and solidarity, this exhibition naturally includes the work of others in order to learn together and build understanding that our struggles—though nuanced and specific—are ultimately often shared.
Unseen. Unheard. Unarchived. explicitly draws on ideas within the writing and work of Barry Barclay and Toni Cade Bambara. Other Cinemas and Aoake bring together these two artists and thinkers as people who have shaped not just the outcomes of their work, but the ongoing processes and tikanga that embed their practices to their communities of Brent and Kawerau. By thinking about the Internationalist approaches of both, who thought locally but acted globally, we draw upon and learn from their work and lives. Both filmmakers understood the value of sharing, telling stories and of creating a nexus of Internationalist solidarity and compassion, which serves as important bodies of work that has been drawn on in order to design this exhibition at Enjoy and wider programme across Te Ika-a-Māui and Te Waka-a-Māui.
Curated by Hana Pera Aoake
Hana Pera Aoake (Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Hinerangi, Tainui/Waikato) is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and educator living at the foot of Pūtauaki maunga. They are a PhD candidate at Auckland University of Technology, a mum and an author of three books. A fourth book is due at the end of this year with Discipline publishing. With the support of Te Tuhi and the British arts council, they undertook a curatorial residency at Delfina foundation with Metroland cultures in London in 2024, which is where they met and first had a yarn with Other Cinemas about movies.
Arwa Aburawa and Turab Shah are an artist duo based in London. Their work is focused on gathering people together to talk, to learn and to create films. This gathering is facilitated through ‘Other Cinemas’, a project they established in 2019 which regularly hosts community screenings and discussions, as well as a film school for Black and non-white communities. Their films reflect on the forces which shape the communities they belong to such as environmental harm, displacement and other legacies of colonialism. They are also guided by questions of justice and how those in the margins create vital spaces for resistance and alternative ways of being. By combining community screenings and a film school with their own filmmaking practice, they seek to think expansively about the potential of film as a tool for radical transformation.
Their work has been exhibited at LUX, Humber Street Gallery, Whitechapel Gallery and as part of the Brent Biennial ‘22. Festival screenings include CPH:DOX, Dokufest, Hot Docs, London Short Film Festival (awarded Best Short Documentary ’25) and BlackStar Film Festival (Best Short Documentary 2024). In 2025, they were shortlisted for the Film London Jarman Award.