This special event will feature screenings of two short films by acclaimed cultural theorist and filmmaker Mieke Bal. Access Denied (2005) traces the journey of an Irish filmmaker and a Palestinian academic as they set out to film the latter on his first visit back home to Gaza in four years. Alternating the vistas of the two figures, the film deftly meditates not just on the contemporary politics of immigration but also the difficulties of understanding across cultural divides and the complexities of representation. It’s About Time! Reflections on Urgency (2020) brings together a set of intricate reflections on time, on the relations between history and the present and, as the exclamation mark intimates, on the urgency to do something about the world. The screenings will be followed by a conversation between Mieke Bal and Desmond Manderson, and an open Q&A.

Cultural theorist Mieke Bal was the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Professor from 2005-2011 and co-founder of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, which is still thriving today. Her areas of interest include cultural analysis; critical semiotics; feminist theory; relations between verbal and visual arts; narratology; psychoanalysis; critique of capitalism; methodology of interdisciplinary approaches; filmmaking as analysis; contemporary art from biblical and classical antiquity to 17th century and contemporary art and modern literature; feminism and migratory culture. Her many publications include A Mieke Bal Reader (2006), Travelling Concepts in the Humanities (2002) and Narratology (4th edition 2017).

Mieke is also a video artist; her internationally exhibited documentaries on migration include Separations, State of Suspension, Becoming Vera, and the installation Nothing is Missing. She made these as part of the Cinema Suitcase collective. With Michelle Williams Gamaker she made the feature film A Long History of Madness, a theoretical fiction about psychosis, and related exhibitions (2012). Additional projects include Madame B: Explorations in Emotional Capitalism. Occasionally, Mieke acts as an independent curator and her co-curated exhibition 2MOVE travelled to four countries. In 2017 she curated an exhibition for the Munch museum in Oslo, on the work of Munch combined with her installation Madame B (with Michelle Williams Gamaker).

Desmond Manderson is jointly appointed in the College of Law and College of Arts & Social Sciences at The Australian National University. He directs the Centre for Law, Arts and the Humanities, designing innovative interdisciplinary courses with English, philosophy, art theory and history, political and critical theory, and beyond. He has authored several books including From Mr. Sin to Mr. Big (Oxford University Press 1993); Songs Without Music: Aesthetic Dimensions of Law and Justice (University of California Press 2000); Proximity, Levinas, and the Soul of Law (McGill-Queen’s University Press 2006); Kangaroo Courts and the Rule of Law: The Legacy of Modernism (Routledge 2012). His most recent monograph, Danse Macabre: Temporalities of Law in the Visual Arts (Cambridge University Press 2019) received the 2019 Penny Pether Prize for research in law and the humanities, and the 2020 Australian Legal Research Award for best book. His co-written play Twenty Minutes with the Devil (with Luis Gomez Romero) premiered at The Street Theatre, Canberra in 2022.