Film Screening | Nour Ouayda: The Secret Garden (2023)
Nour Ouayda
The Secret Garden (2023)
February 18—March 15, 2026
Heather Edwards Theatre | 12-4 PM daily
The Secret Garden (2023) opens with a simple yet uncanny premise. One morning, strange and unfamiliar plants erupt across an unnamed city, turning streets and squares into an entangled labyrinth. Through the voices of Camelia and Nahla – two unseen protagonists who uncover a notebook chronicling this invasion – Nour Ouayda constructs a narrative that wavers between the documentary and the speculative.
Shot on 16mm film, The Secret Garden is punctuated with close-ups of foliage and flowers that function as more than mere botanical studies; they are meditations on the elements of life we often neglect, and over which we have no control. Each shot lingers long enough to reveal grainy textures and muted movements, mirroring the nature of growth, whether it is welcome or parasitic. Across its eight chapters, the film layers these visual fragments with a lyrical voiceover that sometimes feels like pillowtalk, weaving together fragments of a tale that feels cautionary, grounded, and dreamlike all at once.
Beneath its quiet surface, The Secret Garden reflects on the transformations that colour and contour the world we inhabit. The eruption of new life becomes both a symptom of society’s existing ailments and a sign of things to come: a reminder of the chaos and destruction it may cause, but also of the possibility of regeneration. By destabilizing all of these different layers, Ouayda invites viewers to reimagine the city as a living, breathing organism and to consider the potential upside of this plant invasion. Her secret garden is not so much an escape from reality as much as an invitation to reimagine what this reality can – or perhaps should – be, amid the cracks and fractures of the present that we occupy.
The Secret Garden (2023) is being screened as part of This small parcel of earth, a two-part program curated by Muriel N. Kahwagi.
Access to this screening is included with admission. This program is presented in conjunction with Entwined, curated by Mona Filip.
The first work in this series is Christina Battle’s seeds are meant to disperse (2022), on view from December 6-31, 2025, Wednesday to Sunday, 12-4 PM.
About the artist
Photo by Ségolène Ragu
Nour Ouayda (she/her)
Nour Ouayda is a filmmaker and film programmer. Her films experiment with various forms of fiction making in cinema. She is a member of The Camelia Committee with Carine Doumit and Mira Adoumier, and part of the editorial committee of the Montreal-based online film journal Hors Champ. From 2018 to 2023, she was the partnerships coordinator then deputy director at Metropolis Cinema Association in Beirut, where she managed and developed the Cinematheque Beirut project. She also teaches film programming in Beirut.
This small parcel of earth
With works by Christina Battle and Nour Ouayda
Referencing an essay by Lydia Davis, titled “Cohabiting with beautiful weeds,” This small parcel of earth is a two-part screening program that looks at gardens as spaces that are both domestic and tender, but also unrestrained and untamable. Bringing together works by Christina Battle and Nour Ouayda, the program reflects on the garden as a site of care and sustenance, but also of disruption and unruliness, revealing the limits of human control.
In Christina Battle’s seeds are meant to disperse (2022), the garden emerges as a distillation of an intimate and durational practice of care. Through the slow, deliberate act of gardening, Battle reflects on the labor of tending: an act that sustains us both physically and emotionally, connecting personal rituals of nurture with larger ecological and collective rhythms. Referencing various seed vaults throughout the world, the artist looks at seeds not just at the first step of gardening, but as vessels of memory and possibility – carriers of both the traces of past lives and the potential for new ones.
Nour Ouayda’s The Secret Garden (2023) tells the story of a plant invasion that takes over an unnamed city, with plants erupting unexpectedly throughout the streets, unapologetically claiming space. Far from being a domestic agent, the garden here becomes an insurgent: a living force that resists ownership and control. Ouayda’s work reflects on the garden as a site of unrest and upheaval – of unpredictable, even disobedient growth that unsettles the boundaries between the natural world and the built environment.
Together, these works reimagine the garden as a site of both refuge and revolt, where acts of care and gestures of resistance coexist. They invite us to consider how cultivation – whether of plants or relationships – can also be an act of renewal.
Curated by Muriel N. Kahwagi.
This small parcel of earth is programmed in conjunction with Entwined, curated by Mona Filip.
