Writing Hawa

Writing Hawa screens at the Schwarzman Centre on Saturday 24 October, followed by a roundtable discussion with the Afghan Visual Arts and History (AVAH) collective. The film is 84 minutes long, in Dari with English subtitles, and was directed by Najiba Noori.

Shot over five years, Writing Hawa follows three generations of Hazara women from the same family in Afghanistan: Noori's mother, Hawa, and her niece, Zahra, as they work to free themselves from patriarchal traditions. Hawa was forced into marriage as a child and only truly began to read and write when she was 52; with her daughter's support, she went on to open a small textile business. The family's lives were turned upside down by the Taliban takeover in August 2021, which forms the latter part of the film's arc.

The screening is part of Afghanistan Reframed, a festival curated by Dr Chihab El Khachab, Associate Professor in Visual Anthropology and Fellow of Wolfson College, and filmmaker and curator Parwana Haydar. The festival brings together rarely seen films from Afghanistan's cinematic archive alongside contemporary works. It's led by the AVAH collective, a transnational arts collective founded in 2019 by Afghan artists and artworkers to research, contextualise and share the country's visual arts. The roundtable discussion that follows the film runs in English, Persian and Pashto.

It's on at the Schwarzman Centre's Oxford Cinema from 14:00 to 16:00, and entry is free, though you'll need to book your tickets in advance.