Join us for Songs for Distant Suns, a free film programme expanding the group show The Crackling of the Sun:

Songs for Distant Suns brings together two films, which draw on Afrofuturist imaginaries to reframe histories, identities, and collective memory. Through experimental forms that weave together myth, music, poetry, collage, and speculative storytelling, the films propose new cosmologies and modes of belonging beyond colonial narratives.

STARS Collective: STARS (2025, 7’)
So the story goes, the Nommo were migrants from across the cosmos sailing the sky to planet Earth, descendants from a star that you and I cannot see – with the naked eye at least – Sirius B. For thousands of years we could see Sirius A but Sirius B was known only to the Dogon of Mali. And how did the Dogon know? They were told by the Nommo. STARS tells of the Nommo – extraterrestrial Afro-hermaphrodite anthro-amphibian migrants: both female and male, of land and of sea, like humans and fish, with feet and fins, scales and skin, ancestor aliens, rainbow chameleons. This is a queer African tale of tails, told through hand-drawn animation, dance music beats, and magical poetry. (Arsenal Berlin)

Maweena Yehouessi: Sol in the Dark (2021, 51’)
Sol in the Dark is a cinematographic and multimedia collage project by Mawena Yehouessi, whose ambition is to generate new contexts of co-creation as synonyms of alternative modes of coexistence. From script writing to filming, post-production and distribution, the film is an invitation to over fifty artists, researchers, students, and amateurs to retrace altogether—in a poetic and speculative way—the Myth of “Lascar.”  The term Lascar is said to come from Persian, meaning “army.” It was notably used during the 19th century to designate South East Asian native soldiers enrolled by the European colonial forces at sea. In the 1990s in France, Lascar has become a contemptuous qualifier, referring to 2nd and 3rd generation French BIPOC kids from the suburbs—from their daily struggles to their knowledge-making. As such, Lascar appears as both the epicene symbol and symptom of ghosted heredities as much as a fictitious role-model to youth standing on the edges of artistic, academic, media-related, and state-related institutional spaces. The film triggers fugitive modes of narration, representation, and co(n)generation in a post-internet world, and incites some of the viewers to reclaim its collage methodology and tell their own (Afrofuturist) stories—both in content and in form. (Arsenal Berlin)

All films sourced from the archive of Arsenal Filminstitut e.V.

The exhibition The Crackling of the Sun builds on mythic memories and speculative storytelling. It unfolds across the gallery space and extends to two film programmes all offering inquiries into non-linear timescapes and speculative myths, while exploring future worldbuilding as a speculative, collective and feminist practice. The second film programme, Night Carries the Future, will be presented on MON 28 SEPT at 7pm.

Filmstills: Maweena Yehouessi, Sol in the Dark (2022) | STARS Collective: STARS (2025) © the filmmakers and Arsenal Berlin