AZEEMA DIGITAL
From resistance to ruptured identities, we speak to Dina Amer on her debut film ‘You Resemble Me’; a beautiful, tragic and cathartic re-telling of a true story about Hasnaa Aït Boulahcen, the French-Moroccan woman who was implicated in the Paris Attacks of 2015.
Read MoreWith the help of photographer Jasmine Engel-Malone, Ceren Yilmaz Dogan reminisces on a Turkish childhood spent both in awe of Oryantal belly dancing and told to be ashamed of it. Taking inspiration from the aesthetics of these traditional belly dancers, the creative team paired up to reassert the power and beauty of a dance which has been historically mocked, sidelined and exoticised.
Read MoreWriter Rand Al-Hadethi digs into Lara Chahine’s latest mixed-media project scrutinising women’s body politics within her home country, Lebanon, and the wider SWANA region, through personal archival imagery and street photography.
Read MoreWe sat down with South Korean filmmaker Sung-A Yoon to learn more about her recent film Overseas which documents the plight, will and toil of Filipino female migrant workers, often working throughout the Arab region, as writer Thea Sun explores the filmmakers wider body of work.
Read MoreThe Palestinian-Irish playwright tells AZEEMA why she wanted to reimagine A Thousand and One Nights from the female perspective, whilst explaining her career-long devotion to subverting the notions of a ‘meek’ Arab woman and redefining the her place onstage.
Read MoreFollowing the first edition of Oasis: Into the Wild, a two-day festival set against the tranquil backdrop of Dakhla, Editors Sunayah Arshad and Evar Hussayni caught up with its founder Marjana Jaidi. Touching on Marjana’s passion for festivals and the birth of her baby, Oasis, they took a step away from the festival madness to appreciate everything she’s built so far.
Read MoreDigital Editor Dalia Al-Dujaili sits down with playwright Jasmine Naziha Jones to discuss why she wrote an absurd tragic-comedic play for the Iraqi diaspora; at once a deeply personal experience, and a publicly political act of resistance to the narrative around the country’s history of conflict and colonialism.
Read MoreMelat Matusala shares her personal experiences of returning to her Motherland, Ethiopia. Coming to terms with returning, being not quite what she had expected.
Read MoreLarena Amin catches Deniz Pasha in between modes. The new mother shares her intellectualist justifications, and the ramifications of ahistorical society building in her realm of figurative portraiture.
Read MoreFollowing the release of ‘The Swimmers’ on Netflix – a film about her and her sister’s refugee journey from Syria – the Olympic swimmer tells Digital Editor Dalia Al-Dujaili why she wants to shift the narrative towards real women’s refugee stories.
Read MoreAna Maria Monjardino explores intersectional approaches to abortion rights through the experiences of Black and Brown women and non-binary people in Northern Ireland and Ireland. Moving chronologically from the tragic death of Savita Halappanavar in 2012, through the referendums of 2018 and 2019, to the present day, Monjardino considers how much has changed for women and non-binary people of colour seeking abortions since then and what still needs to be done.
Read MorePakistani-Welsh writer and artist Durre Shahwar talks about her creative process and motivations behind her short poetry film, Gathering, which explores nature, landscape, belonging and identity.
Read MoreDigital Editor Dalia Al-Dujaili was lucky enough to sit down with renowned Algerian-American dancer Esraa Warda in her Brooklyn apartment. She tells AZEEMA about the origins of her subversive rai dancing, her long-standing musical partnership with icon Cheikha Rabia, and her excitement about a rare and special upcoming performance during this year’s Le Guess Who? Festival.
Read MoreOver tea in Brixton, Nepali-Caribbean & British artist Maya Gurung-Russel Campbell relays personal histories and the intricacies of her practice to Shams Hanieh, following the opening of her first solo show, Folklore Imaginary, in Hull.
Read MoreSpanning generations and relationships, Jana Amin lets us into her box of memories through a personal essay on what it means to love and what it means to heal from broken love, married with a poetic look into how love has shaped the West Asian built environment in which she grew up.
Read MoreReminiscing on being labelled a nuisance throughout her school years and times when her ADHD was staring straight at her, Tola Coker shares a hilarious and touching account of what receiving a late diagnosis has meant to her, both as a woman and being Black.
Read MoreComplicated mother-daughter relationships are often heightened between immigrant mothers and their daughters, where cultural conflicts add fire to existing generational and familial disconnections. After watching the short film Shaymaa – an exploration of the complications of immigrant parenthood – Italian-Egyptian writer Aya Mohamed meditates on her own tenuous but joyful relationship with her mother.
Read MoreChinese, Jamaican and Greek-Cypriot writer Thea Sun reminisces on memories shared with her about her "absent and enigmatic” grandfather and his club, Champion House – a beating heart of dancehall music in the heart of Kingston, Jamaica, which affected a legacy on the overlooked Chinese identity of the West Indies.
Read MoreMultidisciplinary artist, Furmaan Ahmed, discusses their experience as a queer creator on Instagram with writer Olivia Griffith, and their role in the new Instagram spotlight series, This Is Me: Gen Queer, which celebrates lesser-heard, intersectional voices within the LGBTQIA+ community in the UK.
Read MoreAs this year’s Safar Film Festival gets underway, we speak to the award-winning Jordanian director on how she tried to epitomise Palestinian joy coupled with imposing social restrictions in her debut feature Farha, which tells the story of a little girl in 1948 Palestine who survives the Nakba and is concealed in a cupboard by her father to protect her from pending danger.
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