How Does One Say Queen in Islam

This work is a new film by Sarah Naqvi which has been made in collaboration with Sophie Soobramanien and Hibo Elmi.

The film, titled How does one say ‘queen’ in Islam invokes formative childhood memories in a surreal surrender of self to unrecognised forces of time and space. I begin with decisive women who have moulded my own surroundings and memories but, more broadly, I am concerned with how women have acquired agency and control tactically, by working against social hierarchies and, personally, I revisit those times when, during my childhood, women mould, change, even police, society. I imagine the archetypical ‘auntie next door’ whose business is everyone else’s, and the role she plays in the lives around her which is amplified through a larger context. Although her power is marginal, multiplied it becomes very real.

The film unravels imaginary, familiar, yet unplaceable terrains, that are marked by symbols of friendship and care that subvert the rigid structures of the patriarchy. In the wanderings of her dream, a young girl encounters those women who have fought for and formed her. Her language and mother tongue, synonymous with safety, drift her to sleep, as two different generations sing lullabies of remembrance. Throughout this film, I place importance on women whom I recognise as reckoning forces; women who have changed the course of how and whom attains knowledge and who will continue to do so. Women who can fight in battles, who rule nations, and who can shape futures. They all come alive in imagination, walking on the quilt of today’s resistance. Mothers, grandmothers, daughters sitting, their hands raised against oppression