Past Event
The Whitechapel Gallery is committed to making all of our events as accessible as possible for every audience member. Please contact access@whitechapelgallery.org if you would like to discuss a particular request and we will gladly discuss with you the best way to accommodate it.
– Information about access on site at the gallery is available here https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/visit/access/
– This includes information about Lift access; Borrowing wheelchairs & seating; Assistance Animals; Parking; Toilets and baby care facilities; Blind & Partially Sighted Visitors; Subtitles and transcripts; British Sign Language (BSL) and hearing induction loops; Deaf Messaging Service (DMS).
Transport
– To the best of our knowledge, there are no planned disruptions to local transport on the date of the event.
– Our nearest train station – Aldgate East Underground (1 min) is not wheelchair accessible. The closest wheelchair accessible stations are Whitechapel (15 min), Shoreditch High Street (15 min) or Liverpool Street (15 min).
– Free parking for Blue Badge holders is available at the top of Osborn Street in the pay and display booths for an unlimited period. Spaces are available on a first come, first served basis.
“London is never London but contains traces of other cities, the poignancy of the landscape lies in its ability to conjure, the sound of a horn, Karachi – one city falls into another” – Alia Syed
Shot almost entirely at Whitechapel Underground station, just around the corner from the Gallery, Alia Syed’s film Fatima’s Letter is featured in our free summer season, Life Is More Important Than Art. This film traces a woman’s life through her journey on the London Underground, as the faces she sees around her jog memories of her past, compelling her to write a letter to her friend Fatima.
We observe the thought process behind this letter through a visual day-dream of documentary footage, ruptured by written text and voices speaking in Urdu. Shadows and reflections flit continuously across the screen. Whilst the subtitles are in English, they are rarely in conjunction with what is spoken, producing a layered, ephemeral and fragmented experience, where the audience is dislocated from the narrator. Syed questions the role of language, and highlights the diasporic experience, as London collapses into Karachi and the past falls into the present.
See Fatima’s Letter in its original format in this rare 16mm screening as part of our Thursday late, screened every half hour from 6-9pm.
