Join us for a screening of Theo Panagopoulos’s award winning film ‘The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing’ followed by a conversation with Jess Twyman as we reflect on entanglements between people and land.
Together we will explore ideas of erasure, land based resistance and how through reclaiming 1940s archive film footage of Palestine made by Scottish missionaries, Panagopoulos redefines connections between history, ecology, resistance and memory. A hauntingly beautiful film as Theo questions the role of image-making as a tool of both testimony and violence – and how he found meaning amongst the plants, gestures and silences within the archive footage that he made it his own.
Theo will join us via Zoom – click here to join us
Dan’s Dahl and refreshments and snacks will be served for everyone joining us in Art Exchange.
Admission free – all welcome.
Evening Timetable
5.30 – 5.40 – Welcome and Introduction
5.40 – 6.00 – Watch ‘The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing’
6.00 – 6.15 – In-conversation between Theo and Jess
6. 15 – 6.30 – Q&A with audience
6.30 – 7.00 – Dan’s Dahl + refreshments served at Art Exchange
The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing began with an accidental encounter with film archives showing missionaries gathering Palestinian flowers in the 1940s. The original footage, which had remained unseen for decades, was located a ten minute walk from Panagopoulos’ home in Glasgow. He tells us, “The archives present a world that my Palestinian grandparents knew very well – a world that is now actively being erased by current narratives, imagery and violence. My film reclaims the footage as a form of testimony in a heightened and uncertain time, and as a form of resistance to cultural erasure.”
Theo Panagopoulos is a Greek-Lebanese-Palestinian filmmaker and PhD researcher based in Scotland. His work explores themes of collective memory, displacement and fragmented identities. ‘The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing’ had its World Premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2024, and since then won ‘Best Short Film’ at IDFA and the ‘Grand Jury Prize’ at Sundance Film Festival, and was nominated for a BAFTA Award in 2025, amongst others.
