The Park (Dancing on the Rubble of Empire)
Arwa Aburawa & Turab Shah / United Kingdom / 2026 / World Premiere / 34 min
Over two long summers, this film spends time at a community park in London and asks what it means to celebrate, play, and belong amid the rubble of empire.
Public space is an ideal, democratic place – at least in theory. Artist couple Arwa Aburawa & Turab Shah (‘And Still, It Remains’, CPH:DOX 2024) test this theory in practice in a participatory video work, filmed in a London park at a time when censorship and suppression of critical voices are on the rise – and when collective historical memory of the imperialist and colonial background of the places and spaces we know and share is simultaneously fading.
Aburawa and Shah strike up conversations with visitors to the park, and out of the rubble of imperialism, an image of a community across differences nevertheless emerges. With filmmaking itself as a condition for the social situation being documented, ‘The Park (Dancing on the Rubble of Empire)’ is an open and horizontal work that arises from the communal contributions.
