"I want it to feel like you're in my living room including the chaos"

On today's show, Alicia Zhao and Bruce Koussaba (of Liberation Cinema) are in conversation with the brilliant and staunch organiser of Miya Miya Film Club, Karim Nasser. Miya Miya is a grassroots, community film screening space, carved out as a gathering place for discovery, dialogue and connection - centred around cinema from the SWANA region. Together, Alicia, Bruce and Karim talk about why these independent microcinema spaces matter, how they reshape possibility, and act as a conduit for building a more expansive creative scene in so-called Sydney.

Learn more about Miya Miya here:

Website: https://www.miyamiyafilmclub.com/

Instagram: https://instagram.com/miyamiyafilmclub

Next event: https://www.miyamiyafilmclub.com/upcoming-events/i-cant-think-straight

This episode was produced by Alicia Zhao and Bruce Koussaba, with support from Samantha Haran. Podcast production by Shareeka Helaluddin. 

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To be able to truly envision better world—not just in vague outlines, but vividly in all its colour and brilliance, so much so that you begin to taste on it on your tongue—is the first step to making revolution.

A special collaboration with R.T. Samuel takes us on a journey through their deep and abiding love of speculative fiction, and the possibilities in holds for liberatory world-making, particular Dalit futurisms. RT is a Dalit cultural producer working between London and New Delhi, and a co-editor of the speculative fiction collection, 'The Blaft Book of Anti-Caste SF.' In conversation with different writers from the anthology including Rahee Punyashloka / Artedkar and Hameedha Khan; RT roams across a range of South Asian histories of oppression and resistance, and explores how science fiction can up open new ways of seeing the world.

Learn more
The Blaft Book of Anti-Caste SF: https://www.blaft.com/products/the-blaft-book-of-anti-caste-sf
Follow RT's work via their instagram
Anti-caste SF is available locally in-person or online through the Magenta House

This piece was produced by R. T. Samuel with additional sound design and supervision by Shareeka Helaluddin.

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How do we sustain ourselves for the revolution? 

Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah is a multi award-winning novelist, human rights advocate, lawyer and sociologist researching Arab & Muslim social justice movements, Islamophobia and the war on terror. Yvonne Hong and Sara El Youghun are joined by Randa in conversation about the release of her new book Discipline, unpacking the daily reality of what it is to reconcile living in a world that dehumanises and censors you as a Palestinian. 

Randa speaks about the power of creative fiction and the imagination to change the world; finding joy, discipline and building spaces we can nourish each other to be able to appreciate what are we fighting for, not just what we’re fighting against.

You can order Discipline here from UQP.

Special thanks to Sarah Valle for helping coordinate the interview, Shareeka Helaluddin, Samantha Haran and Alicia Zhao for producing this episode

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How do we rely on each other and take ownership of our collective liberation?

Sehej and Janey take us through sites of DIY culture and alternative economies. From ad-hoc sound systems in Bengal, a sound tower in Palestine, to enclaves and car parks of Wentworthville; exploring ecologies of repair and world building in refusal of extractive colonial power.

Together they remind us that the way we mend and repair fosters our ability to relate to, care for and sustain each other.

Works mentioned -- 
Club Chai HOT CUE Installation Score
Gaza Sound Tower (Minaret)
West Bengal Sound System 
Heart Armour

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A love letter to the hearts and labour of community radio, beaming from a shipping container in Brixton, London aka Reprezent Radio.

Binta Yade is a London-based poet, community builder, storyteller and legacy community radio broadcaster. This is her ode to the radio station that she calls home, and the many people that keep it going through tireless amount of time, love, music selecting, teaching. Despite it all, community radio is somewhere we all return to, where we belong.

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How do you ground your work in the sacredness of life while needing to speak back to the very powers destroying them?

Shareeka Helaluddin and Tommy Boutros speak to journalist and novelist Omar El Akkad, following the release of his aching and relentless title "One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This." The work pieces together words and narratives displaced by the violence of empire, while beckoning us to move beyond trying to find words but to move into actioned compelled by the desire to preserve the sacredness of human lives.

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"I believe in the sweat of love and in the fire of truth..."

These poetic words by Black revolutionary Assata Shakur reverberate through the work of Munanjahli and South Sea Islander scholar, writer and truth-teller Dr. Chelsea Watego, in conversation with Samantha Haran and Ethan Lyons.

Chelsea is known for her fierce commitment to justice and unapologetic advocacy for First Nations sovereignty and people. She is the author of the groundbreaking book Another Day in the Colony, a leading thinker, and the founding director of the Institute for Collaborative Race Research. 

In discussing her upcoming book Black Thoughts Matter, Chelsea speaks about welcoming rage and spite as a fertiliser for projects of love and honouring the legacy of Black feminist radicals. Their conversation further explores her experiences of the power of Blackfulla solidarity and joy with global struggles for Indigenous resistance and sovereignty from Palestine to West Papau.

You can buy Chelsea's new book Black Thoughts Matter from Common Room Editions here.

With thanks to Shanel Cubillo and Anna Carlson for helping coordinate the interview, Alicia Zhao for producing this episode and our beloved Executive Producer Shareeka Helaluddin for all her support.

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Non-linear sounds, improvising as spiritual catharsis, computer coding as companion.

Sehej Kaur & Alicia Zhao immerse into the sound worlds of naarm-based artist Nū. Utilising live coding, Ethiopian samples, gospel trills and reclaiming non-linear time. We unearth the world-building of TECHNOFRO and relinquish into the divine unknown of hope and possibility.

This episode includes clips from Nū's songs Bati and Night Time.

Listen to more of Nū here: https://nu-nu.bandcamp.com/

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What does it mean that desire, even queer desire, is built on dead bodies? What happens when we realise that our desires, even our most intimate, erotic ones, may be rooted in specific, traceable violence and death?

Wiradjuri baddie and alleged tender queer Ethan Lyons on all things TWINK. The desire, the violence, the whiteness of it all. Joined by his dear friend David Soriano, on discerning the colonial parasite, the reproduction of racist harm in gay communities, non western queerness and how we can live truly as queer people, embracing decolonial practices.

This episode references the work if Driftpile Cree Nation writer Billy Ray Belcourt and the work of queer thinker Martin F. Manalansan, Global Divas.

Produced and edited by Ethan Lyons, with creative advice from Shareeka Helaluddin. Podcast edited and produced by Samantha Haran. 

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“Breath. Something we all have in common, yet most take for granted” 

An invitation to listen in, attune to, hold breath and be in solidarity with those in our community living with Long Covid. In collaboration with Dr Poppy de Souza, we bring you stories gathered from her Holding Breath exchange and from the Race Matters community, reflecting on their experiences and responding to: what do we carry with us? what do we leave behind? Together, these voices bring collective wisdom, and offer ways of living with/in embodied discomfort and crip ways of moving through the world. 

Continue to learn more about Poppy’s work, and to listen in solidarity and connect with Long Covid in our racial justice struggle: 

Holding Breath project

Jenna Bitar’s essay in Sick Times “Instead of supporting people with Long Covid, our government funds a genocide” 

Still Here podcast from The Sick Times

Breathing 4 Justice - exploring the intersections of long Covid and disability justice (U.S.)

The Colour of Long COVID series, supported by the Disability Visibility Project

This episode was facilitated by, co-produced and edited by Samantha Haran. Scripting, piano composition, invitations and co-production by Poppy de Souza. Supervising production and creative contributions by Shareeka Helaluddin. Graphics for our community call-out by Judy Ko, arranged by Sehej Kaur Sehmbhi. Image is from contributor Jody Haines, from Tommeginne Country, their ancestral lands where they can breathe most deeply. 

Holding Breath Episode Transcript

With gratitude to all those who contributed to this episode and gave us the trust to uplift your narratives of Long Covid, and our love to those impacted by its grief and loss.

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