Our Eyes as Commonly Tender: Visual Justice in the Filmmaking of Pratibha Parmar

2 Jul-3 Sep 2025

Overview

Presented in conjunction with Connecting Thin Black Lines 1985 – 2025, this film season celebrates the groundbreaking work of Pratibha Parmar, whose films have shaped the politics of feminist, queer, and diasporic visual cultures for over four decades. From experimental shorts to activist documentaries and feature-length works, Parmar’s cinematic language operates as an act of visual justice – a concept she coined to describe ‘a queer diasporic strategy for generating networks of solidarity, art, and pleasure’ (Close 2020). 

Emerging from her deep involvement in the antiracist, transnational, and black feminist movements of 1980s and 1990s Britain, Parmar’s practice engages the image as a site of struggle – challenging the power relations that determine who is seen, how they are represented, and what forms of visual expression are made possible. Her films transform the screen into a space of resistance and reclamation, offering alternative ways of being that confront and reimagine dominant visual cultures. With bold aesthetics and a commitment to centering those too often erased, Parmar interrogates how histories are constructed and what it means to reclaim space – on screen and beyond. This season highlights film as a site of narrative transformation, where memory, activism, and artistic expression converge to resist erasure and imagine new futures. 

The title of this film season comes from ‘In Paris’ by June Jordan, the black feminist poet, activist, and thinker who appears in Parmar’s A Place of Rage (1991). In the poem, Jordan writes of ‘our eyes as commonly tender’ – a phrase that captures the radical vulnerability and care at the heart of feminist solidarity and visual storytelling. Parmar’s films embody this ethos, refusing to separate politics from intimacy. Whether documenting the intricacies of queer desire, the quiet strength of feminist kinship, or the defiant act of claiming space, her work insists on a vision of justice grounded in tenderness, love, and collective care. 

Curated by black feminist artist-researcher, writer, and curator Nydia A. Swaby, Our Eyes as Commonly Tender invites viewers to experience the enduring political and poetic power of Pratibha Parmar’s filmmaking. 

The season culminates in a final screening, followed by a book launch and panel discussion celebrating Parmar’s work and reflecting on the future of feminist film as a tool of resistance, representation, and world-making.