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Raah Media Research Lab
Based in the Film and Moving Image Studies Department at Concordia, Raah aims to examine the intersection of migratory processes and media practices.
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This special edition of the RAAH Podcast takes you on a sound-rich walking tour through Montréal’s historic Garment District—Chabanel. A powerful blend of oral history, community memory, and sonic storytelling, this episode sheds light on the deep-rooted labour struggles of immigrant textile workers.
For more information and to listen, click here.
Produced by Stefan Christoff | Mixed + Edited by Joseph Sannicandro
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Featured Publication
Video Culture in India: The Analog Era
Ishita Tiwary, 2024. Oxford University Press.
About The Lab
Raah is a media research lab based in the Film and Moving Image Studies Department at Concordia. It aims to examine the intersection of migratory processes and media practices. Taking our cue from the evocations offered by the Persian word raah – which can mean ways or passage, and its underlying resonances of fellow-traveler, or companion, Raah aims to investigate the many methodological pathways open to researchers in migration and media studies.
Raah's project is a community-driven model, which hopes to bring together scholars, activists and community partners in a single space, becoming the first institutional hub in Canada for the study of media and migration. Raah aims to host both theoretical and practice-based research, as well as community-facing projects, in order to investigate the questions of immigration, hospitality, marginalization and their mediatized forms.
Recent Events
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“Who Does Montreal Belong To?” – A Community Conversation
Tuesday, June 24 As part of our community partner Brique par Brique's annual Monsoon Festival, we were invited to facilitate a discussion for their Community Conversations series. Who Does Montreal Belong to? Montreal is a city built through layers of migration, solidarity and resistance, the labour of its vibrant, diverse communities forming the weave of its […]2025-06-27 -
Queer Cinema for Palestine 2025 – No Pride in Genocide
Wednesday, June 25 We co-presented Cinema Politica's Queer Cinema for Palestine 2025 showcase - No Pride in Genocide. Part of a global film event co-organized by Queer Cinema for Palestine and PACBI, with 100+ partners worldwide, this year’s program featured eight queer short films by Palestinian and allied SWANA-region filmmakers, each paired with a pre-recorded […]2025-06-27 -
Palestine Everywhere Screening #3: A Collection of Shorts
The screening series 'Palestine Everywhere- Looking at Palestinian Migration through Concordia’s Film Collection' is born from a desire to activate the vast collection of film about Palestine present in the film collections house within Concordia University. These films are often used as teaching material in a variety of courses offered by the university, but they are seldom […]2025-04-02 -
The Hour of the Furnaces: Part 1 (1968) Screening
Tuesday, March 25 ⟡ Come join us as we watch Colectivo Cine Liberación's film at the center of Latin America's revolutionary cinemas, The Hour of the Furnaces: Part 1 - Neocolonialism and Dominance (1968), in 16mm print on Tuesday, March 25! ⟡ 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗛𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗮𝗰𝗲𝘀: 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝟭 - 𝗡𝗲𝗼𝗰𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗺 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗩𝗶𝗼𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 (𝟭𝟵𝟲𝟴) 𝗢𝗰𝘁𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗼 𝗚𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗼, […]2025-03-11
Research
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Unlimited Data, Unlimited Desire
2025-02-04Sneha Kumar, 2023 | Unlimited Data, Unlimited Desire: How Indian streaming platform ‘ALTT’ structures a relation between sex/desire, nationalism, and infrastructure. -
Thinking the non-binary, incommensurability, and sex in Thiagarajan Kumararaja’s Super Deluxe (2019)
2025-02-04Sneha Kumar, 2023 | Concordia University - Film & Moving Image Studies -
Representations of Palestine in Egyptian Cinema: Politics of (In)visibility
2025-02-04Claire Begbie 2023 | Representations of Palestine in Egyptian Cinema -
“OTT is Exactly What TV is Not”: Structural Adjustment and Shifts in India Scriptwriting
2025-02-04Ishita Tiwary 2023, In Amanda Lotz and Ramon Lobato ed. Streaming Video: Storytelling Across Borders, New York University Press, 2023.
The Raah Podcast: Labour in the Shadows
Migrant Instability @ Mai | Montréal, arts interculturels
Produced by Stefan Christoff | Mixed + Edited by Joseph Sannicandro
This special edition of the RAAH Podcast takes you on a sound-rich walking tour through Montréal’s historic Garment District—Chabanel. A powerful blend of oral history, community memory, and sonic storytelling, this episode sheds light on the deep-rooted labour struggles of immigrant textile workers, including the 1980s strike and the 2007-08 layoffs tied to corporate outsourcing. Featuring voices from longtime organizers & artists like Joey Calugay, Mostafa Henaway, Yumna Siddiqi, Bita Mary Eslami, and muralist Hélène Guay (Helenka), this episode weaves together past and present resistance in a neighbourhood shaped by deindustrialization & gentrification.
Listen to the episode here!
The Raah Podcast: Subaltern Perspectives
Migrant Instability @ Mai | Montréal, arts interculturels
In October of 2024, the Raah Lab hosted a two-day event gathering scholars and community organizers for a series of presentations. Discussing what possibilities and frictions emerge at the intersections of academia and activism, this workshop is captured here as the many speakers and panels are placed into conversation with each other.
Listen to the episode here!
Recorded and edited by Jared Aronoff
Music by Stefan Christoff
Migrant Instability
Migrant Instability @ Mai | Montréal, arts interculturels
2023
Migrant Instability is a duo exhibition that questions what one carries and/or what one leaves behind when they “move”. The presented works attempt to create a dialogue between the violently transformative experiences of a first-generation immigrant (Jin) and the constant state of displacement a second-generation immigrant (Park) experiences throughout their life. For Jin and Park, the heightened hostility against Asian bodies during the pandemic has also heightened the physical and spiritual disconnection from diasporic homelands.
2023
This SSHRC funded project organized in collaboration with the nonprofit social housing organization Brique par Brique (Brick by Brick) aimed to explore how social housing can be imagined as mutual aid via participatory media-making practices and involved participants from Parc Ex documenting their neighborhood through video diaries. The project was initiated through conducting a three-day workshop led by Teagan Lance which provided the participants with training in videography, sound recording and editing. The project culminated in a screening of shorts films made by two participants Judy Wong and Meryem Ouadban on 3 June 2023 at the Brique par Brique Community Centre.
2023
The Raah podcast originated from a Pilot episode positioning disability as a figure of the migrant. Jared interviewed independent singer/songwriter Tarquin Alexandra about her upcoming album about disability and her experiences of exclusion and isolation as a chronically ill woman during the sociological production of the end of the pandemic. Future episodes of this podcast are in development, including a recap of the lab’s disability studies reading group. The goal of the podcast will be to explore further unconventional figures of the migrant, experimenting with the critical tools we can develop by expanding the scope of this definition.
Community
