Wednesday, 5 November 2025
Follow us   View our videos

Event Details

Cadê Heleny? / Searching Heleny - Front (Photo: Martin Melaugh)

Cadê Heleny? / Searching Heleny - Front (Photo: Martin Melaugh)

 

Workshop, Talk and Film Screenings:Human Rights 2025 Programme
Description: In the context of present flagrant human rights violations, including Palestine, Ukraine, and Sudan, Conflict Textiles, Ulster University, INCORE, Queen’s University Belfast, and the Tower Museum are joining forces to present a three-day programme (8-10 December) to mark International Human Rights Day with a programme cross universities, campuses, and cities.

The programme will bring together film students, human rights researchers, activists, curators and the wider community to explore how textiles and film can act as powerful carriers of memory, truth, and justice. Through screenings, workshops, exhibitions, and discussions, the joint programme highlights creative responses to trauma and the disappeared across different global contexts.

The Derry-Londonderry - programme will focus on the arpillera and film about Cadê Heleny? / Searching Heleny. Heleny Guariba was a philosopher, professor and theatre director who disappeared in 1971 under the Brazilian dictatorship. Esther Vital, originally from the Basque Country, who has been involved with CT since 2008, will be presenting her work at the Tower Museum and Nerve Centre. Esther's work started with writing her post- graduate dissertation on The Art of Survival: International and Irish Quilts, and has since developed to encompass arpillera workshops, organising exhibitions and lately filming in Brazil. She will also be actively involved in filmmaking workshops for non-filmmakers and festival programming with UU Cinematic Arts students.

Dr. Lauren Dempster will organise the programme in Belfast. Two events will take place at Queen’s University Belfast - a lecture by Selma Catović Hughes (originally from Bosnia) and a film screening of My Father’s Diaries, made by Ado Hasanović (a Bosnian film director and festival programmer based in Rome). Both events are rooted in the lived experience of the Srebrenica genocide and its aftermath and explore the role of the creative arts as a response to human rights violations.

A detailed programme can be found here.
Commissioned by: Conflict Textiles, Ulster University & Queen’s University
Date(s): 8th December 2025 - 10th December 2025
Venue: Ulster University (Derry-Londonderry), Nerve Centre, Tower Museum, Queen’s University
Curator: Conflict Textiles, Ulster University, Queen's University, INCORE, Tower Museum
Facilitator: L.Aguiar, É.Féron & B.Hamber UU, L.Dempster Queen’s, B.Walsh & M.Edwards Tower Museum
Outcome:




Documents: • Programme 8th to 10th December 2025 - view
 




Textiles Displayed:Cadê Heleny? / Searching Heleny