Joe Blog

Portals is an experiment in curating, distributing and, above all, exhibiting international arthouse, non-english language, and independent world cinema for African audiences. Following a lineage of cinema as witness and imagination through resistance, we welcome you to our first edition in Joburg, a port without a sea. People arrive here carrying everything they have. We invite you to gather with us, as a way of crossing borders, encountering other lives, and thinking about power across past, present, and future through film.
Booking: Purchase a “R20 Cafe Voucher” to reserve your seat for this screening. This will get you R20 off your Bioscope Cafe bill on this day.
Sonic Lecture by DJ, archivist, and arts journalist Atiyyah Khan
Description: AS-SHAMS documents one of the earliest black-owned jazz labels and its visionary founder Rashid Vally - a long-time associate of the late Abdullah Ibrahim - and Kohinoor, the iconic Joburg record store that endured as a cultural institution under apartheid. Explore lesser known history through records, archival material and narrative journalism, at the first official Johannesburg launch of the zine.