ICA is closed from the 30 May – 3 June inclusive.
2 July - 3 September 2025
Image: A Place of Rage, dir. Pratibha Parmar, UK, 1991, 52 min.
Connecting Thin Black Lines 1985 – 2025
Presented in conjunction with Connecting Thin Black Lines 1985 – 2025, this film season celebrates the groundbreaking work of Pratibha Parmar, whose films have shaped the politics of feminist, queer, and diasporic visual cultures for over four decades. From experimental shorts to activist documentaries and feature-length works, Parmar’s cinematic language operates as an act of visual justice – a concept she coined to describe ‘a queer diasporic strategy for generating networks of solidarity, art, and pleasure’ (Close 2020).
Emerging from her deep involvement in the antiracist, transnational, and black feminist movements of 1980s and 1990s Britain, Parmar’s practice engages the image as a site of struggle – challenging the power relations that determine who is seen, how they are represented, and what forms of visual expression are made possible. Her films transform the screen into a space of resistance and reclamation, offering alternative ways of being that confront and reimagine dominant visual cultures. With bold aesthetics and a commitment to centering those too often erased, Parmar interrogates how histories are constructed and what it means to reclaim space – on screen and beyond. This season highlights film as a site of narrative transformation, where memory, activism, and artistic expression converge to resist erasure and imagine new futures.
The title of this film season comes from ‘In Paris’ by June Jordan, the black feminist poet, activist, and thinker who appears in Parmar’s A Place of Rage (1991). In the poem, Jordan writes of ‘our eyes as commonly tender’ – a phrase that captures the radical vulnerability and care at the heart of feminist solidarity and visual storytelling. Parmar’s films embody this ethos, refusing to separate politics from intimacy. Whether documenting the intricacies of queer desire, the quiet strength of feminist kinship, or the defiant act of claiming space, her work insists on a vision of justice grounded in tenderness, love, and collective care.
Curated by black feminist artist-researcher, writer, and curator Nydia A. Swaby, Our Eyes as Commonly Tender invites viewers to experience the enduring political and poetic power of Pratibha Parmar’s filmmaking.
The season culminates in a final screening, followed by a book launch and panel discussion celebrating Parmar’s work and reflecting on the future of feminist film as a tool of resistance, representation, and world-making.
Click here to explore the full exhibition and event programme.
Image: A Place of Rage, dir. Pratibha Parmar, UK, 1991, 52 min.
Connecting Thin Black Lines 1985 – 2025
Presented in conjunction with Connecting Thin Black Lines 1985 – 2025, this film season celebrates the groundbreaking work of Pratibha Parmar, whose films have shaped the politics of feminist, queer, and diasporic visual cultures for over four decades. From experimental shorts to activist documentaries and feature-length works, Parmar’s cinematic language operates as an act of visual justice – a concept she coined to describe ‘a queer diasporic strategy for generating networks of solidarity, art, and pleasure’ (Close 2020).
Emerging from her deep involvement in the antiracist, transnational, and black feminist movements of 1980s and 1990s Britain, Parmar’s practice engages the image as a site of struggle – challenging the power relations that determine who is seen, how they are represented, and what forms of visual expression are made possible. Her films transform the screen into a space of resistance and reclamation, offering alternative ways of being that confront and reimagine dominant visual cultures. With bold aesthetics and a commitment to centering those too often erased, Parmar interrogates how histories are constructed and what it means to reclaim space – on screen and beyond. This season highlights film as a site of narrative transformation, where memory, activism, and artistic expression converge to resist erasure and imagine new futures.
The title of this film season comes from ‘In Paris’ by June Jordan, the black feminist poet, activist, and thinker who appears in Parmar’s A Place of Rage (1991). In the poem, Jordan writes of ‘our eyes as commonly tender’ – a phrase that captures the radical vulnerability and care at the heart of feminist solidarity and visual storytelling. Parmar’s films embody this ethos, refusing to separate politics from intimacy. Whether documenting the intricacies of queer desire, the quiet strength of feminist kinship, or the defiant act of claiming space, her work insists on a vision of justice grounded in tenderness, love, and collective care.
Curated by black feminist artist-researcher, writer, and curator Nydia A. Swaby, Our Eyes as Commonly Tender invites viewers to experience the enduring political and poetic power of Pratibha Parmar’s filmmaking.
The season culminates in a final screening, followed by a book launch and panel discussion celebrating Parmar’s work and reflecting on the future of feminist film as a tool of resistance, representation, and world-making.
Click here to explore the full exhibition and event programme.
Bios
Pratibha Parmar (b. 1955) is an award-winning filmmaker and activist whose groundbreaking work centres marginalised stories with bold creativity and political urgency. Her oeuvre spans experimental shorts, activist documentaries, and feature-length works, forging a cinematic language rooted in what she calls visual justice: a queer diasporic strategy for generating networks of solidarity, art, and pleasure. Her internationally acclaimed films Khush (1991) and Warrior Marks (1993) have contributed to advancing rights for women, girls, and LGBTQ+ communities around the world. An earlier video, Sari Red (1988), is held in the permanent collections of MoMA (New York) and the Centre Pompidou (Paris). Most recently, Sari Red and Reframing AIDS were featured in Women in Revolt! at Tate Britain (2023–24).
Parmar has received numerous honours, including the ICON Award for Outstanding Contribution to Indian and World Cinema, the Frameline Award for LGBTQ+ media, and the 2022 Mind the Gap award, previously awarded to Viola Davis and Emerald Fennell. She has taught film as Associate Professor at California College of the Arts, served as a Visiting Artist at Stanford University, and is a member of both the Directors Guild of America and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She is also the author, co-author, and editor of several books and essays, and is currently writing her memoir.
Nydia A. Swaby is a black feminist artist-researcher, writer, and curator. Her practice engages archives, autoethnography, photography, the moving image, and the imagination to explore the gendered, diasporic, and affective dimensions of black being and becoming. Nydia is a member of the editorial board of Feminist Review and co-edited its special issue on Archives. She holds a PhD from the Centre for Gender Studies at SOAS, University of London, and has previously worked at the ICA and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
Nydia was the inaugural Caird Research Fellow jointly based at Royal Museums Greenwich and UCL’s Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery. She is currently a Whose Heritage Curatorial Fellow at Royal Museums Greenwich and serves on the advisory board for the Atlantic Worlds Gallery at the National Maritime Museum. Her first book, Amy Ashwood Garvey and the Future of Black Feminist Archives, was published by Lawrence Wishart in October 2024 as part of its Radical Black Women series. She is the curator of Our Eyes as Commonly Tender: Visual Justice in the Filmmaking of Pratibha Parmar and To Learn to Dance with Fireflies, First Accept the Dark: Five Films by Helen Cammock, both presented as part of Connecting Thin Black Lines, 1985–2025.
Programme
Wednesday 2 July, 7pm
Pratibha Parmar: Memory Pictures, Flesh & Paper, Khush + Q&A
This evening brings together three films by Pratibha Parmar that explore South Asian queer diasporic life through modes of intimacy, memory, and resistance.
Wednesday 6 August, 7pm
Pratibha Parmar: Alice Walker – Beauty in Truth + Q&A
This richly layered portrait of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker traces her journey from the segregated American South to international literary and activist acclaim.
Wednesday 3 September, 7pm
Pratibha Parmar: Emergence, Sari Red, A Place of Rage + panel discussion
This evening brings together three landmark films directed by Pratibha Parmar that chart a bold feminist politics of resistance, kinship, and solidarity across transnational feminist imaginaries. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion and the launch of a new publication on Parmar’s work.
Wednesday 2 July, 7pm
Pratibha Parmar: Memory Pictures, Flesh & Paper, Khush + Q&A
This evening brings together three films by Pratibha Parmar that explore South Asian queer diasporic life through modes of intimacy, memory, and resistance.
Wednesday 6 August, 7pm
Pratibha Parmar: Alice Walker – Beauty in Truth + Q&A
This richly layered portrait of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker traces her journey from the segregated American South to international literary and activist acclaim.
Wednesday 3 September, 7pm
Pratibha Parmar: Emergence, Sari Red, A Place of Rage + panel discussion
This evening brings together three landmark films directed by Pratibha Parmar that chart a bold feminist politics of resistance, kinship, and solidarity across transnational feminist imaginaries. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion and the launch of a new publication on Parmar’s work.
no. 236848.