After Hours Film School: Basma al-Sharif
A Grammar Built with Rocks Convening
Behind the scenes image by Mariam Mekiwi for Basma al-Sharif, Morgenkreis (Morning Circle), 2025. 16mm film, 20:31 min. Courtesy of the artist
About the event
Date: Sunday, January 25
Time: 11am–12:30pm (1.5 hours)
Format: Online (via Zoom)
Capacity: 15 participants
Cost: $25–75 (Sliding scale, no one turned away for lack of funds)
Register here.
*No prior filmmaking experience required
After Hours Film School is a workshop series devoted to new currents in cinematic practice. The series invites moving-image makers to share new work or work-in-progress and engage with participants in a seminar-style discussion around methodology, production, and key questions animating their work. After Hours is organized by Kirsten Gill and Rachel Valinsky.
In this workshop, artist and filmmaker Basma al-Sharif reflects on recent and earlier work, tracing the development of guiding questions and methodologies over time. Centered on themes of invisible violence, dehumanization, and displacement, the workshop considers how domestic and civic architectures encode both historical legacies and present conditions. Al-Sharif examines how built environments register power, exclusion, and belonging, and how Western cultural frameworks often fail to recognize immigrants as integral to the societies they inhabit.
The session leads into the research that shaped Morgenkreis (Morning Circle) (2025), a short, visceral narrative film that unfolds in three parts to describe loss and separation–from early childhood experiences of rupture to the often imperceptible violence of forced integration when one’s country is no longer livable. The film follows a father and son in their intimate rituals as they prepare to start the day and head to kindergarten. With close attention to image, sound, and narrative structure, the workshop invites participants into a conversation on cinematic form and its political stakes.
This program is organized as part of a weekend-long, multi-venue convening that engages the edited anthology A Grammar Built with Rocks. Additional events include The Trace of Land, a screening of short films at Anthology Film Archives on Friday, January 23; a reading group, conversation, and performances at the Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA) on Saturday, January 24; and a listening session at Wendy’s Subway on Sunday, January 25.
About the artist
Palestinian artist/filmmaker Basma al-Sharif explores cyclical political histories and conflicts. In films and installations that move backward and forward in history, between place and non-place, she confronts the legacy of colonialism through satirical, immersive, and lyrical works. Al-Sharif received an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2007, and was a resident of the Fondazione Antonio Ratti in 2009 and the Pavillon Neuflize OBC at the Palais de Tokyo in 2014–15. She received a Jury prize at the Sharjah Biennial in 2009; was awarded a Visual Arts of the Fundación Botín in 2010 and Mophradat’s Consortium Commissions in 2018; was a fellow of the Berlin Artistic Research Grant Programme in 2022–2023; and was nominated for the Prix Award for 2024. In 2025 al-Sharif published her first monograph Semi-Nomadic-Debt-Ridden-Bedouins, and her film Morgenkreis (Morning Circle) won the Grand Prize at the 39th Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur. Major exhibitions include: Hannah Ryggen Triennial, The Gothenburg Biennial, Pompidou Metz, de Appel, the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago, MOMA, CCA Glasgow, SALT Galata, the Whitney Biennial, Here and Elsewhere at the New Museum, Berlin Documentary Forum, and Manifesta 8. Her films have screened in the international film festivals of Locarno, Toronto, Berlin, Mar del Plata, Milan, London, New York, Montreal, and Yamagata, among others. Basma is based in Berlin and represented by Galerie Imane Farés in Paris.