Both Authors and Authored

Abstract

Our Memory Belongs to Us (Rami Farah and Signe Byrge Sørensen, 2021) reunites three activists from a failed revolution—Rani, Yadan, and Odai—in a theatre in Paris in 2019, where codirector Rami Farah plays footage they’d shot themselves during the Syrian revolution. Farah’s approach is one of critical generosity, in which the activists are made to reflect on their images from the past from the perspective of the present. As explored by Stefan Tarnowski in this essay, the resulting documentary directly addresses the activists’ ability to drive political transformations and assemble publics of humanitarian concern through image circulation.