R21 aka Restoring Solidarity · Mohanad Yaqubi
Qatar; Ocupied Territories of Palestine; Belgium · 2022 · 71’
27 Oct · 18:30 · Ilídio Pinho Auditorium

Between the 1960s and 1980s, an international solidarity movement supported the Palestinian cause. In particular, several groups of militant left-wing activists from Japan arrived in Palestine. The best known is the JRA (Japanese Red Army), of which filmmaker Kōji Wakamatsu was a member. Another Japanese filmmaker who dedicated much of his life to the Palestinian cause was Masao Adachi. In the mid-2010s, a large collection of these militant films was discovered in an apartment in Japan—films produced by various international groups, all subtitled in Japanese. A total of 21 film reels were identified (hence the title “21 Reels”), which Palestinian artist and filmmaker Mohanad Yaqubi was invited to identify, catalog, digitize, and archive. An initial version of this work was presented as an installation at Documenta 15 (in 2022); however, under pressure from Israeli authorities, the films were censored and the artist was forced to remove them—a move that sparked enormous controversy. To ensure their exhibition, Yaqubi created R21 AKA Restoring Solidarity in which, through the process of displaying the copies, he also educates the public about analog media and the importance of building an archive (for the preservation of collective history and memory).