Alia Syed

Second part of a triptych of films that utilises different histories while focusing upon recognizable locations along and within the River Thames: from Millbank Prison (now the site of Tate Britain) to Second World War architecture on the Essex coastline. Linking places as far flung as the Canadian Northwest Passage and a cellular prison in the Andaman Islands, the three Missives create an extended narrative recited by the female captain of a ship returning to the Thames from the Canadian Arctic. Meta Incognita: Missive II is based on the exploits of the Elizabethan privateer turned explorer Martin Frobisher, who repeatedly sailed to the Canadian Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage. Set in a future where global warming has opened up the Northwest Passage to heavy/commercial/trans-continental cargo trade, the narrative follows a renegade ship’s captain who has undertaken a commission to smuggle the last remnants of an unspecified natural resource.

On a Wing and a Prayer is a film inspired by the story of Abdul Rahman Haroun, who walked through the Channel Tunnel on 17th August 2015. Mr Haroun was held on remand for 5 months at Elmley Prison. He has since been released and granted asylum but was charged under the Malicious Damage act of 1861 for illegal entry into the UK. The language in this bylaw, when juxtaposed against the physical and emotional feat of traversing 30 miles of the Channel Tunnel supplies the terrain for this film.

'Points of Departure’ uses archive footage of a collective past and combines it with personal recollections to fracture the normative culturally dominant view of Glasgow’s cityscapes and re-insert a Scottish Asian presence.

Priya is an extended aerial shot of a twirling Kathak dancer. The footage was buried in various organic materials deteriorating the initial image in an attempt to shift cultural specificity and linear narratives of time and space. Rituals of burial expound successive memories of entombment; the skin of the film becomes the body of the dancer, fracturing time into a darkly evocative, psychological space.

Wallpaper is a performative documentary in which four generations of women in the artist’s family attempt to recreate a wallpaper design that was painted by Syed’s grandmother when the artist was a child. It features Syed, her daughter, mother, and grandmother, as well as her sister, artist-filmmaker Tanya Syed. Documenting the process in video and 16mm film, the five women take turns in the film’s technical roles (performer, director, camera operator), thus de-stabilizing the relationship between filmmaker and filmed subject, and the traditional generational hierarchy. The result is a self-reflexive and delicately layered film which deals with family, memory and subjectivity.

Filmed in Karachi, Lahore, and London, Eating Grass comprises five overlapping narratives, each representing different emotional states experienced throughout the day that are marked by the Muslim tradition of the five daily prayers. The film’s title references a remark made by Pakistan’s Prime Minister. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1974 amid the nuclear arms race with India. He said his people would have their own nuclear weapon even if it meant “eating grass.”

Spoken Diary, intertwines the inner angst of a woman traversing hesitation, loss and denial with that of her journey through dark, wet and desolate streets of London.

A film about the pain of speaking; where speech falls back on itself, carving a space in which we can touch one another and see. A space in which disparate testimonies collide, and where water is shed. The point just before a new balance is found — the point of devastation before one again remakes oneself.

A woman remembers her past by faces she sees while travelling on the London Underground. She begins to believe that these people, like her, have all taken part in the same event. She composes a letter to her friend Fatima – a personal documentary around journeys, memories and watching. The story is spoken in Urdu with sub-titles in English, although the subtitles do not always appear in conjunction with what is spoken.

Panayotis gambles his way out of his village near Sparta. Anthony escapes his English stately home. They meet in nighttime London, during a bloody fight. Together, they discover a new way of life.

An urban fairy tale in which three characters negotiate a space where myth and reality constantly collide. Syed uses the character of The Lady of Shallot as the films’ central theme. Interweaving sections of the poem ‘The Lady of Shallot’ by Tennyson, with her own text, the film explores feelings of isolation and the desire to connect.

Unfolding depicts the gendered space of the launderette as both a site of oppression and possible resistance. “I was interested in making a film about women’s work spaces; the launderette is a functional space, but it is also a place where women meet socially. I got to know the women, took my Bolex (a wind-up camera) and after a while I felt comfortable enough to start filming. It made me aware of the way in which documentaries can be a form of control. On the one hand, it was a straightforward documentary and, on the other, it questioned my role as maker. It took a long time to make and was extremely rigorous.” (Alia Syed)

A filmic meditation of sexuality, loss and rebirth, in which meaning is built through association, repetition and pace. As with Unfolding and Swan this film was made whilst Syed was still a student at University of East London. The film was structured entirely through the process of exploring 16mm printing techniques; the pace of the film being stipulated by the time it took to fade from a saturated dense black to a ghostly white in which the memory of an image more than the actual image is perceived.

A white swan prepares for flight, flexing and caressing, extending and folding its wings repeatedly as if bracing for a long journey. The close-up images of the swan are de-contextualised via repetition and framing; abstracting the natural form until it becomes a blank screen, which the viewer can project their own meaning onto.