Shuruq 4.5 Film Series Feature: The Feeling of Being Watched (w/ Artist Q&A)

Assia Bendaoui sets out to investigate long-brewing rumors that her quiet, predominantly Arab-American neighborhood was being monitored by the FBI. When she’s investigating, she exposes a surveillance program on a scale no one could have imagined.

Shuruq 4.5 and Habibi Collective present a live screening of the feature film, ​The Feeling of Being Watched.​ Following the screening, join Habibi Collective founder Róisín Tapponi and director Assia Boundaoui for a Q&A session on surveillance in Arab American cinema.

Róisín Tapponi is an Iraqi-Irish curator, film programmer and writer based in London. In 2018 she founded Habibi Collective, a digital archive and curatorial platform for MENA women’s filmmaking. She has directed four film festivals in the region, most recently Iraq’s first independent film festival, Independent Iraqi Film Festival (IIFF). She has​curated programmes on MENA filmmaking in galleries, festivals and cinemas across the world and has lectured on Arab film at institutions such as Oxford University. She is currently developing the first independent streaming service for MENA cinema, Shasha Movies Ltd. She is also founder and editor of ART WORK Magazine, a critical art e-publication for cultural workers operating on the margins, and has worked as a freelance journalist for publications such as The Guardian, Frieze, Vogue and i-D. Tapponi currently works at The Mosaic Rooms, a gallery in Kensington dedicated to contemporary Arab art and is pursuing postgraduate research at UCL.

Assia Boundaoui​ is an Algerian-American journalist and filmmaker based in Chicago. She has reported for BBC, NPR, Al Jazeera, VICE, and CNN and was the recipient of a first place Mark of Excellence Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for her reporting in Yemen.