“Overcoming Oblivion” brings together three key North African films which impose the subjective power of indigenous oral culture onto the disingenuous objectivity of the image. Through popular poetry or storytelling, all three films aim to “decolonise the screen.” **

Preceded by a brief presentation and followed by a discussion with members of the AWAL collective, this second out of three sessions features Assia Djebar’s “Zerda: Or the Songs of Oblivion” (1982, Algeria, 55 min.). Through this documentary, Djebar subverts the imperial gaze through a montage which remixes colonial archives from the Maghreb to recount the region's colonial history from a native women's perspective.