Screening + Q&A with Jumana Manna and Sille Storihle moderated byRijin Sahakian
Curated by Shoghig Halajian
The Goodness Regime (21 mins, 2013) is a film written and directed collaboratively by the artists Jumana Manna and Sille Storihle. With the help of a cast of children, the film investigates the foundations of the ideology and self-image of modern Norway – from the Crusades, via the adventures of Fridtjof Nansen and the trauma of wartime occupation, to the diplomatic theatre of the Oslo Peace Accords.
The Goodness Regime was shot in Norway and Palestine, and combines the children's performances with archive sound recordings (including US President Bill Clinton speaking at the signing of the Oslo Accords, and Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik's New Year address to the Norwegian people in 2000) and new documentary footage filmed on location. In the course of their research, Manna and Storihle interviewed Ron Pundak, one of the Israeli architects of the Oslo back-channel talks, and Hanan Ashrawi, the former Palestine Liberation Organisation spokeswoman; the film premiered at Kunsthall Oslo exactly twenty years after the conclusion and signing of the Oslo Agreement by Israel and the P.L.O. in August and September 1993.