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THE SIGHT IS A WOUND video essay (2025)
Filmed and photographed by Dean Casper / Caustic Coastal
Special Thanks to M. Mirzaie Souzani
SYNOPSIS
"The Sight is a Wound" by Parham Ghalamdar is a haunting meditation on the collapse of imagery in the face of modern atrocities. The film begins with a simple question: What can the artist offer when the images of our time overwhelm the capacity of frames to contain them? In the wake of the ongoing genocide in Gaza—live-streamed by its perpetrators and rendered unbearable in its clarity—Ghalamdar burns over 50 of his own paintings, works exhibited in solo and group shows across renowned institutions worldwide.
The act of destruction becomes a visceral response to the impossibility of creating images with greater urgency or ethical weight than those emerging from Gaza’s harrowing reality. Flames consuming canvases dominate the screen, transforming the medium of painting into ash and silence.
The film is neither a documentary nor a protest piece but a striking video-poem exploring the moral and philosophical collapse of image-making itself. It presents a stark challenge to artists and audiences alike, urging a reckoning with complicity, desensitization, and the ethical failure of seeing in the age of digital oversaturation. "The Sight is a Wound" is not just a film; it is a funeral for the image and an invocation of silence.
AWARDS/SCREENINGS/EXHIBITIONS
The Sight Is a Wound has toured festivals across the globe. It was a finalist at LEEDSflix in Leeds and screened at Short Cuts Film Club at the University of Winchester. Further selections include Feel The Reel International Film Festival in Glasgow, Courage Film Festival in Berlin, Sunday Shorts Film Festival in London, Short Shot Fest in Moscow, Eutopia Arthouse Film Festival in Barcelona, London Visionary Festival in London, and Badnam Film Festival in Bangalore. The film also travelled with the Open Secret touring programme, showing at Good Eye Projects in London, Casa Do Comum in Lisbon, Dhaka Mythos in Dhaka, and Bayt Al Mamzar in Dubai. Additional screenings include CosmiX IV International Experimental Cinema Festival in Paris, Sluice Film Festival in Seyðisfjörður, Caring Frames Charity Short Film Festival in Manchester, and Dorset Indie Film Festival in Dorset.
Awards to date include Best Experimental at Berlin Kiez Film Festival, Best Underground at Short Film Factory in Târgu Mureș, the Jury Award for Behind the Straight Line of Everyday at Pebbles Underground Summer Screenings, Best Short Documentary in the Manhattan leg of the 3rd Gjon Mili International Video Art Festival, Best Arthouse at Absurd Film Festival in Milano, and STTP Plus Films of the Week in Bucharest.
Recent selections and presentations include Darkroom Festival, London (13 Sep 2025), Futures Connected, Belgrade (20 Aug 2025), MicroActs Artist Film Screenings, London (18 Sep 2025), Bristol Radical Film Festival, Bristol (4 Oct 2025), MOTAVALI EXPANDED [4] Room for Doubt and Parking Video Library, Berlin (5 Sep 2025, Program B+1), VIDEOAKTION 6 attaque(e)r le visible, Berlin (5 Dec 2025), X Festival Video nodoCCS Art in Motion The Rhythm of Inquiry Unfolding New Narratives, Caracas (12 Nov 2025), Phoenix Rising International Film Festival, London (14 Nov 2025), and Reverberations MA Research Architecture Screenings at Goldsmiths, London (1 Oct 2025, guest conversation). The project also featured as Ghosts in the Feedback Loop UAAD on New Art City, New York (8 Sep 2025, online exhibition).
Earlier in 2025 the film was selected by Braziers International Film Festival, Oxfordshire, for the Collective Memories strand where it was presented as a six minute video poem. It was also selected for the 3rd Gjon Mili International Video Art Festival The Skin of Light, screening in Korçë 27 to 29 Aug 2025, Dhërmi 1 to 3 Sep 2025, and Manhattan 26 Sep to 4 Oct 2025.
IN SEARCH OF...
Screened all day at the Old Police Station, Lark Lane, Liverpool, 9 Aug 2025, as part of In Search Of. The Sight Is a Wound is a six minute video poem and funeral for the image, projected onto brick beside a table of drawings by Gazan children. Two testimonies side by side. Refusal and insistence.
Credit: Installation photo by Parham Ghalamdar. Program lead Tom Doubtfire.
EMBEDDED MEDIA
https://www.youtube.com/embed/u7abcDebhQE
