The conversation that followed the talking about it is also resistance shorts program seemed to circulate within familiar discursive boundaries. As I surveyed the room, it became evident that the majority of the participants shared not only cultural affinities and diasporic connections to the Arab world, but also a collective investment in film and artistic production from the region, which shaped both the content and tone of the exchanges. Our perception was inevitably colored by the framework of the workshop, which was precisely what drew us together in the first place.

This prompted a fundamental question about the function and aspiration of the events: Was Regards Palestiniens merely failing to reach wider audiences, or was it intentionally fostering a space of collective recognition for a fragmented diaspora, to consolidate a shared cultural and political imaginary, however partial and provisional?

The program included Jayce Salloum’s untitled part 1: everything and nothing (1999–2001), the artist’s remarkable interview with Soha Bechara a year after her release from the Khiam prison. I watched her take up the screen, telling Salloum, “Tu attrapes les idées!” (You catch ideas!), in recognition of his intuitive and perceptive approach to interviewing. Filmed in the intimate setting of her dormitory room in Paris, the encounter unfolds with Salloum, who remains off-camera, directing questions in heavily accented French while Bechara responds in Arabic, a language he does not understand. Consequently, Salloum relies primarily on her nonverbal cues—gestures, facial expressions, silences, and reactions—to guide the camera’s minimal adjustments. At the film’s open, Bechara is visibly uneasy. Her discomfort manifests in the way she continuously rubs her hands. But she grows more at ease, eventually looking directly into the lens, betraying the thoughts that seem to be running through her mind. She is surprised by the depth of his questions, which, by her own admission, prompted reflections she had never previously articulated. She thinks before answering, taking the necessary time to untangle her thoughts, and she considers each word as if to calculate its precise weight. At one point, she smiles and jokingly threatens Salloum with a pillow he has asked her to remove from the frame, an intimate gesture that subtly signals the shifting dynamic between subject and filmmaker, one that grows into ease, trust, and shared tacit understanding.

Untitled part 1 exemplifies Salloum’s attunement to the unseen affective residues of political trauma. His approach to the interview opens spaces for the immaterial remnants of violent episodes to be captured. As such, the interview with Bechara becomes a device through which her particular knowledge is elicited, shaped, and ultimately mediated through the artist’s own sensibilities and judgments. He is invested in capturing the aftermath of conflict—in this way, speaking directly to many who were present at the workshop, especially given their ties to diasporic communities from the Arab world. Salloum seems to be chasing liminal moments, finding himself in Lebanon, the Balkans, or Afghanistan just as the cannons have fallen silent, while the reverberation of violence persists, and right before daily life resumes as normal.      

His attention to filmed encounters at moments of significant transition invites a broader question about how the space of exhibition shapes the reach of his work, its reception, and the forms of engagement it invites. Although Salloum’s work has been presented in theatrical and gallery installation contexts, the distinction between the two is particularly consequential. The former setting creates a more focused environment, encouraging sustained attention and a deeper investment on the audience’s part, allowing the artist to unambiguously emerge as both a conduit for oral history and an authorial figure who constructs and communicates particular versions of truths. In the case of films built around interview-based strategies, such as untitled part 1 and several other works from his untitled series, as well as Talaeen a Junuub (Up to the South, 1993), the film-screening setting offers immersive context and encourages a direct engagement with the testimonial form. Both the choice of subject and the strategies Salloum employs made his work particularly resonant for the audience that attended the workshop and the screening, especially considering the gaps in formal historical accounts of Lebanon’s civil war. Bechara’s testimony is not positioned as interpretive or metaphorical, but as an encounter with lived experience, where narrative ambiguity is minimal and emotional authenticity is foregrounded, making it relatable and by extension easier to “believe.”

In contrast, gallery exhibition spaces provide viewers with the choice of whether to commit to the full duration of Salloum’s time-based works. Although these settings frequently encourage a transient mode of viewing, with visitors drifting in and out and engaging with only portions of the narrative, they might possibly broaden audience reach, offering a more subtle entry point for those who may not attend events such as the ones organized by Regards Palestiniens, to encounter the work and engage with its content.

Because of its format, content, and intimate scale, the screening at Cinéma Public that evening succeeded in creating a vital space for collective gathering, critical engagement, and open dialogue. This is particularly important in a metropolis like Montreal, where feelings of fragmentation and isolation are somewhat prevalent, and where waves of immigration crash up against the province’s and nation’s struggle to reckon with their colonial histories. These gatherings, then, become more than sites of aesthetic encounter. They remind us of the enduring need for spaces where diasporic and political affinities can be reaffirmed and reimagined. Yet it is important to recognize that these events are isolated instances within a much broader landscape, and to remain mindful of their limits. They return us to the question and the challenge that opened this reflection: Are we merely speaking to ourselves within familiar circles, or are we finding new ways to extend these conversations outward to reach broader publics, and to move these encounters beyond self-recognition to generate new relations and solidarities?