‘‘Cinema as a weapon to resist, to fight, to talk’’
In the ArtReview Podcast, artists, thinkers and cultural figures are invited to choose three works as lenses through which to examine their practice and explore critical issues impacting the contemporary art world.
In our seventh episode, artist and photographer Zineb Sedira speaks to ArtReview digital editor Alexander Leissle about Algerian cinema, the Scopitone and her new Tate Britain Commission, open until 17 January 2027 in London.
Listen now on Spotify and YouTube. All of the works referenced in this podcast can be viewed below.
About Zineb Sedira
Zineb Sedira is a London-based Franco-Algerian photographer, performance and video artist whose work draws on personal archives, cinema and themes of displacement and identity, often in relation to the Algerian diaspora of Africa. She represented France at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022 with an installation titled Dreams Have No Titles.
Credits
Interviewer: Alexander Leissle @alexanderleissle
Host and producer: Chiara Wilkinson @chiarawilkinson
Audio editor: Charlie Duffield
Music design: Iona Smith @ic_yonic
Works mentioned, in order of reference
• Agnès Varda, Salut les Cubains (1963), is a documentary short made in the photomontage style, featuring hundreds of pictures of postrevolution Cuba taken by the French filmmaker.
• Zineb Sedira’s 2026 Tate Britain Commission is a site-specific work responding to the Tate’s neoclassical Duveen Galleries. Featuring sculpture, film and installation, and exploring the idea of art and cinema as tools of revolution, the commission features a recreation of an Algerian café in Paris from the 1970s, with a vintage jukebox and books about cinema. Open until 17 January 2027.
• American-French photographer William Klein was appointed by the Algerian government in the late 1960s to create The Pan-African Festival of Algiers (1969), a documentary film cataloguing the first Pan-African Cultural Festival: a 12-day event in Algiers featuring political speeches, concerts and street marches. The Pan-African Festival of Algiers (1969) is screening at the Barbican cinema, London, 8 July 2026.
