aemi Presents – Desire Lines
Sun 12 July | 14:00 | Pálás Screen 2
2026 | 76’
aemi is thrilled to partner with Galway Film Fleadh to present a screening of Desire Lines, a touring programme of artist and experimental film that brings together a range of voices from Irish and international contemporary practice.
“Desire lines” is a term from the field of landscape architecture used, as Sara Ahmed writes, to describe “unofficial paths, those marks left on the ground that show everyday comings and goings, where people deviate from the paths they are supposed to follow”. Taken as a whole, the films featured in Desire Lines by Basma al-Sharif, Chloe Brenan, Olivia Normile, Collectif Faire-Part and Eóin Heaney, offer up a picture of imposed and chosen deviation, a picture that takes in experiences of isolation and displacement alongside those of collective resistance and revelation, taking care to capture the fleeting moments where these possibilities can briefly intersect.
Morning Circle (Morgenkreis)
From our earliest experience of separation to the imperceptible violence associated with integrating to a new country when yours is no longer livable.
Countries: Germany, Canada, UAE
Director/Writer: Basma al-Sharif
Verdigris
Verdigris explores how architecture shapes movement and how digression can operate as a subtle form of resistance.
Countries: Ireland, France
Director: Chloe Brenan
as above, so below (Limits and Demonstrations)
This film employs strategies of editing and collage to interrupt familiar patterns of speech and physical movement.
Country: Ireland
Director: Olivia Normile
Speech for a Melting Statue
After the 2020 BLM protests in Brussels, a poet rehearses her speech for the removal of a statue of Leopold II. Her words are paired with archival images from a museum in Kinshasa, where colonial monuments have been absent for decades.
Countries: Belgium, Democratic Republic of Congo
Director/Producer: Collectif Faire-Part
Body Diagrams (Limits and Demonstrations)
Body Diagrams maps elusive feelings, vague symptoms, and experiences of illness through a series of hand-drawn animations.
Country: Ireland
Director: Olivia Normile
PARISH
Shot on 16mm film in the Dublin suburb where I grew up Parish is a hybrid documentary film exploring the representation of community identity through fact, fiction, biography, myth, and memoir.
Country: Ireland
Director/Producer/Writer: Eóin Heaney