‘The said and the unsaid’ is aemi’s exciting, new 2025 touring programme, an annual selection platforming some of the most exciting new moving image work by Irish artists in conversation with key international works. This programme includes new Irish works by Frank Sweeney and Jonathan O’Grady alongside works by filmmakers Maryam Tafakory and Stephanie Barber.
This eclectic programme of work shifts from an act of deliberate and playful obfuscation (3 Peonies) to a process of attempted rediscovery (In Search of the Forenaughts Longstone) to an uncovering of media artefacts that speak to both deliberate and discrete forms of expression in the face of state sponsored censorship (Nazarbazi and Few Can See). Together these works describe a variety of creative means of expression borne out of a necessity to speak, however indirectly. Followed by a discussion with filmmaker Frank Sweeney. This programme is 76 min.
3 Peonies, Dir. Stephanie Barber, 2017, U.S., 3 min
A brief, poetic 16mm film on a simple sculptural action. An experimental film in which the simplicity of the image is offset by the sonic implications.
In Search of the Forenaughts Longstone, Dir. Jonathan O’Grady, 2021, Ireland, 12 min
O’Grady’s film mediates on the privatisation of land and heritage, inaccessibility as invisibility and trespassing as a necessary tactic for cultural reclamation.
Nazarbazi, Dir. Maryam Tafakory, 2022, Iran/UK, 19 min
Nazarbazi [the play of glances] is a film about love and desire in Iranian cinema, where depictions of intimacy and touch between women and men are prohibited.
Few Can See, Dir. Frank Sweeney, 2023, Ireland, 42 min
Broadcasters across Ireland and Britain have entered into a blackout strike. The workers are transmitting a programme bringing censored voices back onto the airwaves.
Winner of the Tiger Short Award 2024 at International Film Festival Rotterdam and received a Special Mention from the jury at the FILMADRID Awards
