Farah Atoui

Farah Atoui (she/her) is a postdoc fellow at Concordia University’s Communication Department, in affiliation with the Feminist Media Studio. She holds a Ph.D. in Communications Studies from McGill University, Montreal. Her doctoral thesis examines experimental Syrian documentaries as cinematic countervisualizations invested in disrupting the visual regime of the Syrian refugee “crisis.” More broadly, her research engages with artistic interventions produced under conditions of struggle—war, occupation, crisis, displacement—as sites for critical knowledge-production and resistance that renew social and political imaginaries. Farah is also a curator and film programmer, and a member of the Regards palestiniens and Regards syriens screening collectives. 

Contact: farah.atoui@mail.mcgill.ca  

Projects 

Co-organizer, of The Political Aesthetic: Displacing Resistance, Resisting Displacement, a screening series that offers a framework for exploring the notions of displacement, refuge, and creative resistance through the medium of the moving image, La Lumière collective, 2023.

Co-organizer of Making Revolution: Collective Histories, Desired Futures a video exhibition exploring representations of struggle and revolution in the Middle East and North Africa, Montreal Arts Interculturels (MAI), 2021.  

Co-organizer of Imaging and Imagining Intimacy, an interdisciplinary conference engaging with theories and methodologies of intimacy together with the political potential of images, McGill University, 2021.  

Co-organizer of Queer for Palestine, a screening program of queer shorts that focuses on the intersection of gender and sexual identity with the Palestinian liberation struggle, La Sala Rossa, 2021.  

Co-organizer of Revolution Until Victory, A Palestine solidarity outdoor screening and discussion, 2021.  

Co-organizer of Beirut Over and Over Again, a solidarity and fundraising outdoor screening of short films from/on Beirut, 2020. 

Co-organizer of The Political Imaginary of Waiting, a year-long graduate student working group and public screening and lecture series exploring the politics, poetics, and aesthetics of waiting through the lens of media studies. This project, in collaboration with Concordia University’s Global Emergent Media Lab and La Lumiere collective, culminated in an artist-led workshop on decolonial artistic practices, 2018-2019. 

Publications  

Farah Atoui (2023). “Of Place and Cement.” World Records Journal Vol. 8  https://worldrecordsjournal.org/bidayyat-of-place-and-cement/ 

Farah Atoui (2020). “Return, Recollect, Imagine: Decolonizing Images, Reclaiming Palestine.” Postcolonial Directions in Education, 9(1), 8-42.  https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/57 

Farah Atoui (2020). “The Calais Crisis: Real Refugees Welcome, Migrants ‘Do Not Come’.” In Moving Images: Mediating Migration as Crisis. Krista Lynes, Tyler Morgenstern, Ian Alan Paul (eds.). Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag. 211-228.  https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839448274-017 

Farah Atoui and Nour Ouayda (2020). “Surgissements : poétiques de l’image vidéo.” Hors champ, Mai/Juin. https://horschamp.qc.ca/article/surgissements-potiques-de-limage-vido 

Farah Atoui (2016). “Appropriate, Remix, Erase, Zoom in: The Transformative Power of Filmmaking in Kamal Al Jafari’ s Recollection.” Offscreen, 20 (10) https://offscreen.com/view/transformative-power-in-recollection 

Activities  

Member of Regards palestiniens, a screening collective dedicated to organizing an annual program of Palestinian Cinema.

Member of Regards syriens, a screening collective dedicated to organizing an annual program of contemporary Syrian cinema.