HOLDING SPACE 2026 – Rituals of Reciprocity – Land and Water Short Films
Short films
2026
HOLDING SPACE is a three year annual program of artistic commissions, creative developments, workshops, public programs and events that aims to provide a provocation and a forum to share cultural and creative ideas, experiences, understandings and learnings centred around belonging and community connectedness. In 2026, the theme is Rituals of Recriprocity – Land and Water. Learn more about the artists here.
In response to theme of Rituals of Reciprocity – Land and Water, the artists are running workshops and creating artistic works across various creative mediums including visual art, film, and performance. This will all be centred around sharing cultural and creative ideas, experiences, intercultural understandings and learnings centred around stewardship of the planet and community connectedness.
The film artists include Ali Rezvani, Aprille Asfoura & Ahmed ElKhalidi, Sivani Yaddanapudi as well as collective comprising of Annabel Hom, Maggie Tra, San May & Sovannary Chan. Please note that the following include current works in progress as well as behind the scenes. This page will continually update with information on the artists' projects as they come. Please watch this space as well as our social channels for more information including when to see the final works.
If you are looking for information on the workshops, then please click here.
HANEEN
Aprille Asfoura
Work in progress
HANEEN is a series of short film vignettes that honour intergenerational Palestinian-Australian memory and ancestral connection to land and water. Through intimate, conversational filming with Aprille’s father and aunty, collage-style animation by Ahmed ElKhalidi, the work explores how sensory memory, displacement, and ritual travel across generations and geographies.
Each vignette pairs a thread of remembered experience with the Australian landscape we now inhabit, creating a layered conversation between past and present, between Bethlehem and the Blue Mountains, between the Persian Gulf and the Sydney coast. The camera work is visceral and close — texture of fabric, glint of sun in the lens, hands on bark, sand between toes — grounding memory in the body and in the present moment.
Aprille brings over fifteen years of experience across the screen and creative industries, spanning documentary direction, production design, and story development. She has supported and organised international productions and screenings from Australia, the U.S. and Germany. She holds a Graduate Diploma in documentary from the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS) and participated in Documentary Australia’s Impact Producer Program in 2024.
Aprille is the founder of Arts Impact Society, an organisation using art, storytelling, and visual media as tools of resistance and solidarity across colonised lands. Its current slate is committed to Palestinian liberation through projects like Names Not Numbers, a documentary channel centring voices from Gaza, and public campaigns including typographic interventions, poster campaigns, and memorial print works designed to challenge dominant narratives, demand public attention, and move people to action. Aprille’s practice asks how collective creative work can tend to memory – documenting what matters before it is lost and asking how we pass it on.
Palestine (Margaret River, 2024), Hurriyah at the South Australian Living Artists Festival (2024), Hurriyah (Abdali, 2023), Sin Límites at Casa Árabe (Spain, 2020), the International Biennial of Contemporary Art (2007), Squiggle Gallery, the Amman Theatre and Arts Festival (2007), the International Salon of Contemporary Artists (2002), the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts (2003), and printmaking exhibitions at Darat al Funun (1995). Alongside his art practice, ElKhalidi works as a multidisciplinary designer, collaborating with cultural organisations, community groups, and public institutions on visual communication and creative projects.
His work has been shaped by his family's Polish migration story and collaborations with groups like Led By Donkeys and The Syria Project. He co-founded Arts Impact Society out of a belief in using art as a tool of resistance.
Sound Design & Editor: Robert Werner
Producer/Director & Editor: Aprille Asfoura
Featured: Nasri Asfoura and Diana Asfoura
CREDITS
HOLDING SPACE is funded by the NSW Government through the Multicultural NSW COMPACT Program. Our project collaborators are SSI’s Community Refugee Welcome Centre located at Callan Park, Lilyfield, and Community Partners Sydney Opera House.
The 2026 HOLDING SPACE artists are Ali Rezvani, Aprille Asfoura & Ahmed Elkhalidi, Azarmidokht Elahi, Catherine Sarah Young, Fale Tumanu, Kirsten Maglalang, Kylie Colemane, Nicole Barakat, Rodaba Qureshi, Shiva Dadvar, Sivani Yaddanapudi, Sohrab Kolahdooz & Shervin Mirzeinali, duo: Jade Dewi Tyas Tunggal & Ria Soemardjo, and collective: Annabel Hom, Maggie Tra, San May & Sovanarry Chan.
Webpage header image is a still of Ahmed ElKhalidi's animation work for Aprille Asfoura's project HANEEN.
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Always Was, Always Will Be, Aboriginal Land.
Our office is located on Darug land at Fairfield City HQ. We would like to acknowledge the Cabrogal Clan of the Darug Nation, the traditional custodians of the land. Our work takes us across Darug, Dharawal and Eora lands. Sovereignty was never ceded.