Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza is also a war on Palestinian memory. Journalists, educators and scholars have been killed; universities, cultural institutions and media infrastructure deliberately destroyed. These are not isolated acts but part of a longstanding and systematic epistemicide. Aimed at erasing Palestinian culture, knowledge, and historical presence, this violence has taken many forms: from the depopulation of villages and the erasure of native names to the looting and elimination of archives – including audiovisual records of Palestine and its people.

This event brings together Palestinian scholar-activist Shahd Abusalama and Greek-Palestinian filmmaker, curator and researcher Theo Panagopoulos for a conversation about the displacement and destruction of Palestinian film heritage in light of the images reaching us from Gaza today. Shahd is the author of Between Reality and Documentary (Bloomsbury and SOAS Palestine Studies, 2025), a groundbreaking new study on filmic representations of her native Gaza that traces a visual history from colonial and humanitarian filmmaking to contemporary Palestinian documentary. Theo’s latest work, The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing (2024), draws on found footage of Palestinian landscapes and wildflowers – shot by Scottish missionaries in the 1930s and 40s and now held in the National Library of Scotland’s Moving Image Archive – to imagine forms of resistance through archival returns. The film also forms part of a PhD project Theo is currently completing at the University of the West of Scotland, which focuses on archives of Mandate-era Palestine.

Following a screening of the film, Shahd and Theo will discuss their encounters with archival images of Gaza and Palestine; the dispersal of Palestinian film heritage not only through imperial looting and forced exile, but also through international networks of Palestine solidarity; and what restitution might mean in the broader context of Palestinian returns.

The event will be moderated by Nikolaus Perneczky (Queen Mary University of London), with support from Queen Mary's Centre for Public Engagement.