An evening of film, memory and conversation unfolded at the Austrian Film Museum in Vienna with a screening of Difficult Love (2010) and Enraged by a Picture (2006), followed by a discussion facilitated by Djamila Grandits.

The two films offered audiences different ways of encountering Zanele Muholi’s practice, extending the questions of visibility, representation, identity, memory and witnessing that have remained central to their work.

Difficult Love provides an intimate encounter with Muholi’s life and photographic practice, bringing together their archive, personal histories and the people whose lives and experiences have become part of their ongoing visual record. Enraged by a Picture (2006) turns toward the politics of the photographic image, engaging with questions of representation, violence, and the gaze.

Following the screening, Djamila Grandits facilitated a conversation around the films and the questions they raised. The discussion created space to reflect on the relationship between photography and film, the responsibility of documenting lives and histories, and the ways in which images can become sites of memory, resistance, and self-representation.

Presented at the Austrian Film Museum, the evening offered a different encounter with Muholi’s work: one shaped by cinema, the movement of film, and the collective experience of watching and discussing together.

The screening formed part of Muholi’s wider presence in Vienna alongside Zanele Muholi: We Are Here at Foto Arsenal Wien, connecting the moving image with a broader practice rooted in photography, archive, testimony and the documentation of Black queer and trans lives.

Photography: Thandwayinkosi Buthelezi