| |
Mapping Subjectivity, Experimentation in Arab Cinema 1960-Now, Part II Museum of Modern Art, New York
October 5 - 23, 2011
This three-part program aims to map a largely unknown heritage of personal, non-mainstream, artistic and sometimes experimental cinema from the Arab world. Emerging in the 1960s, from within a wider trend of vanguard and counter-cultural experimentation in the arts (poetry, literature and theater), filmmakers crafted a language and form that broke away from established conventions and commercial considerations, ultimately clearing the ground for subjectivity to find expression. A significant part of the inventive, daring and formally challenging filmmaking at work today in the Arab world has roots –actively and consciously or not– in this pioneering drive to experiment with narrative, representation and the production of images. Programmed cross-national and cross generational, the films in the series highlight kinships, intangible connections, and conversations.
Various distinctive themes for Part II emerged after viewing a broad specter of works by filmmakers of different generations within the region. Works selected for this second edition of Mapping Subjectivity hail from Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Mauritania, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia, and UAE; they underline the diversity and richness of voices and imaginative visual approaches evidenced in the first edition of the program, and firmly positions filmmaking as an integral part of the modernist and contemporary impulse within artistic practice in the Arab world.
From the 1960s onwards, filmmakers and artists have used existing footage, whether 'found' or institutional –borrowed from television, cinema, public or personal archives–, filmic, photographic or audio, to create montages, collages and assemblages, and forge narratives and visuals that are profoundly daring, innovative and subjective. These works engage critically –sometimes provocatively, and others caustically– official narratives, or express sentiments otherwise not pronounced.
From a personal history spoken in the first person singular, Akram Zaatari's This Day, Yto Barrada's Hand-Me-Downs, Ahmad Ghossein's My Father Is Still a Communist and Ali Essafi's Wanted, subversively address a shared, national narrative, while Azzeddine Meddouri's How Much I Love You, truncates official news archives to tell the 'other' story of liberation from colonialism in the first person plural. If audio-visual archives are a repository and chronicle of memories and lived moments, they are part of the fabric of a collective imaginary and poetics as much as cinema, which Rania Stephan's The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni explores boldly. Néjib Belkadhi’s VHS Kahloucha tells the story of an everyday man’s re-appropriation of film classics, while Ali Essafi’s Ouarzazate the Movie uncovers the other history of the film industry. Mohamed Soueid’s Tango of Yearning is a passionate cinephile’s poetic elegy to cinema and Beirut’s movie theaters, pieced from memories and traces of a city undergoing a radical mutation. His My Heart Beats Only for Her blends elements of fiction and non-fiction to tell a singular father and son story and their reveries of glory, each’s connections to the dream industries. Stories of sons with dreams for a better life, forging their destiny and enduring a rupture between generations inspired a selection of films by critically acclaimed and accomplished auteur filmmakers, such as Ahmed el-Maanouni’s The Days, the Days, Abdel-Rahmane Sissako’s Waiting for Happiness, Oussama Mohammad’s Stars in Broad Daylight, and Yousry Nasrallah’s El Madina. Last, but certainly not least, we inaugurate this series with Lakhdar Hamina’s majestic The Chronicle of the Years of Embers, the epic of sons and daughters forging their destiny and liberation from colonial rule.
This exhibition has been co-organized by The Museum of Modern Art and ArteEast. It is curated by Jytte Jensen, Curator, Department of Film, MoMA and Rasha Salti, Senior Director, ArteEast.
The program is presented in association with the Abu Dhabi Film Festival.
.jpg)  .jpg)   
|
|
|
Waqai Sanawat Al-Jamr (Chronicle of the Years of Embers)
1975. Algeria. Directed by Muhammad Lakhdar Hamina. 130 min.
Wed, Oct 5, 8:00 p.m. (introduced by Hamina) - T1
Thu, Oct 13, 4:00 - T2
Winner of the prestigious Palme d’Or at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival, this historical epic from director Muhammad Lakhdar Hamina tells the story of the Algerian Revolution through the eyes of a peasant, portraying Algeria's struggle for independence from French colonial rule. The narrative follows a peasant's migration from his drought-stricken village to his eventual participation with the Algerian resistance movement, just prior to the outbreak of the Algerian War of Independence. Also noted for its beautiful cinematography, this stunning film from director Mohamed Lakhdar-Hamina is a landmark in Algerian cinema and the first film from the Arab world to be awarded the Palme d'Or. More
|
|
|
Al-Sarab (The Mirage)
1979. Morocco. Directed by Ahmed Bouanani. 110 min.
Thu, Oct 6, 4:00 - T2 Fri, Oct 21, 7:00 - T2
Ahmed Bouanani’s first feature film, Al-Sarab (Le Mirage) played a pivotal role in bringing experimentalism to Moroccan cinema, a strain that continues to run through much of the country’s filmic offerings. Le Mirage tells the deceptively simple fable of a young peasant’s attempt to change money he discovers in a flour bag, only to be taken on a journey through the city’s dark labyrinth, finding that nothing is as it seems. The film’s narrative structure continuously makes allusions to everything from literature to film, citing Morocco’s rich history and oral traditions, whilst tackling the ever-present specter of colonialism. More
|
|
|
Combien Je Vous Aime (How Much I Love You)
1985. Algeria. Directed by Azzeddine Meddour. 105 min.
Thu, Oct 6, 7:00 – T2
Sat, Oct 22, 2:00 – T1
Combien Je Vous Aime (How I Love You), directed by Azzeddine Meddour and released in 1985, is not your typical documentary: the film presents a loose timeline, augmenting its central argument that facts don’t necessarily matter, but rather language and how it is used by the media and political leaders. Drawing upon a wealth of archival material, including snippets of French broadcast news, the film is a critical look at colonialism and the power play behind everyday speech. How I Love You presents a vitriolic and often humorous take on French politics in Algeria, elucidating the discourse of power, wherein historical facts are pushed to the side in favor of jingoistic language that results in the repression of an entire population. More
|
|
|
Al-Yaom (This Day)
2003. Lebanon. Written, directed, and cinematography by Akram Zaatari. 86 min.
Fri, Oct. 7, 4:00 - T2
Sat, Oct 15, 1:30 - T2
The outcome of a research on the circulation of images in the Arab world, This Day is an extroverted voyage in geography and an introverted voyage in memory and recording of the everyday. It uses video and photography to communicate mobility, closure, archive and transmission in the contemporary divided geography and jarred history of the Arab world. It starts in the desert, where presumably Arab civilizations are said to have originated, and where, in the 1950s, Jibrail Jabbur, a historian, photographed in a village at the edge of the Syrian desert, a Bedouin woman holding a jar on her head. The video soon unfolds into a re-construction of ‘natural’ landscapes and becomes a laboratory where new images are forged in light others, from institutional and private, personal archives. It delves into the filmmaker’s diary of the 1982 Israeli invasion and siege of his hometown, Saida, his coming of age and discovery of world cinema. More
|
|
|
Abi Ma Zal Shuyu‘iyyan, Asrar Hamimah Lil Jamee‘ (My Father Is Still a Communist)
2011. Lebanon/UAE. Directed by Ahmad Ghossein. 32 min.
Fri, Oct. 7, 4:00 - T2
Sat, Oct 15, 1:30 - T2
All that remains from the relationship between Rachid Ghossein and Maream Hamade are the letters, recorded on audio cassettes, that they sent to one another over 10 years during the civil war in Lebanon. Throughout his childhood, their son Ahmad invented stories about his father being a war hero with the Communist party in Lebanon. Commissioned by the Sharjah Art Foundation. In Arabic; English subtitles.
More
|
|
|
Fi Hatha al-Bayt (In This House)
2005. Lebanon. Written, directed, and cinematography by Akram Zaatari. 30 min.
Fri, Oct 7, 7:00 - T2
Wed, Oct 12, 7:00 - T2
2005. Lebanon. Written, directed, and cinematography by Akram Zaatari. Ali Hahsisho volunteered with a radical communist group affiliated with the Lebanese Resistance Front fighting the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon. From 1985 until 1991, he and some comrades occupied a house abandoned by its owners, and when they received orders to withdraw from their post, Ali left a letter to the house’s owners inside a mortar shell casing he buried in their garden. More than a decade after the end of the war, the filmmaker decided to unearth the letter. 30 min. More
|
|
|
Al-Hareb (Wanted)
2011. Morocco/UAE. Written and directed by Ali Essafi.
Fri, Oct 7, 7:00 (Introduced by Essafi) - T2
Wed, Oct 12, 7:00 - T2
In the 1970s, Moroccan schoolboys and students dreamed of freedom and democracy. Severe police crackdowns on dissent and wide arbitrary arrests, detention, secret prisons have branded the decade as the “years of lead.” A number of activists lived in hiding. Aziz was twenty-three years old at the time, he was lonely and carried a false identity for two years before he was identified and arrested.
More
|
|
|
Hand-Me-Downs
2011. Morocco. Directed by Yto Barrada. 71 min.
Fri, Oct 7, 7:00 - T2
Wed, Oct 12, 7:00 - T2
Barrada digs into her family history and narrates 16 “myths” based on unreliable narrators and unverifiable stories, illustrated with strangers’ home movies found at flea markets and archival films from the last half-century in Morocco. Courtesy of Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Hamburg + Beirut.
More
|
|
|
Ashlaa (In Pieces)
2009. Morocco. Directed by Hakim Belabbes. 91 min.
Sat, Oct 8, 2:00 - T2
Wed, Oct 19, 7:00 - T2
An unflinchingly intimate diary of the filmmaker’s family in Morocco, In Pieces uses footage collected over more than a decade, filming pivotal and eventful moments in the filmmaker’s family destiny. The film is a poetic chronicle, construed over chapters of generations enduring the passage of time, life and death, children growing up, a son disappearing in the gaols of the regime, another son (the filmmaker) leaving the country, births, circumcisions, and farewells to a dying father, who, for a long time, owned the only cinema in town. Even though this is a family’s biographical chronicle spanning decades, one suspects it is also the chronicle of a country, a society, narrated to the fraction of the first person plural/singular. The death of the father-patriarch, echoes the end of the old order and raises questions on the ‘new’ order. The filmmaker’s back and forth visits to the home-country, the multiple returns of the emigrant-son, who has become an insider-outsider observing, recording, over the years the extent to which larger social and political change has –or has not– permeated to his modest family’s unit. Hakim Belabbes is definitely an eccentric figure in the landscape of Moroccan cinema, he shifts gracefully between fiction and non-fiction, he is unabashed about delving into the intimacy of his family’s and own life, and has articulated with compelling eloquence a peculiar poetics of film. In Pieces is his most accomplished and bold work to date.
More
|
|
|
Hiya + Howa Van Leo (Her + Him Van Leo)
2001. Lebanon. Written and directed by Akram Zaatari. 32 min.
Sat, Oct 8, 4:30 - T2
Wed, Oct 12, 4:00 - T2
This portrait of famed Armenian-Egyptian studio photographer Van Leo, whose career spanned some 50 years, is also a reflection on the transformations in the practice of photography, from hand-developing to digital manipulation. As Zaatari puts it, “Van Leo used photography to display multiple images of himself, assuming different identities. At a time when nationalism was rising in Egypt, Van Leo was plotting, encouraging, and promoting multiple subjectivities.” In Arabic, French; English subtitles. 32 min. More
|
|
|
Ikhtifa’aat Soad Hosni el-Thalaathat (The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni)
2011. Lebanon/UAE. Written & Directed by Rania Stephan. 70 min.
Sat, Oct 8, 4:30 - T2
Wed, Oct 12, 4:00 (Introduced by Stephan) - T2
The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni is a rapturous elegy to a rich and versatile era of film production in Egypt which has lapsed today, through the work of one of its most revered actress and star: Soad Hosni, who from the early 1960 into the 90s, embodied the modern Arab woman in her complexity and paradoxes.
Born in Cairo in 1943, Soad Hosni committed suicide in London in 2001. Between the ages of 19 to 49, she played in eighty-two feature films with thirty-seven directors. Inspired by her rags to riches story, she was given the nickname ‘The Cinderella of Arab cinema’; she was the daughter, sister, friend, fiancée, lover and wife to illustrious stars of Egyptian cinema when it was the chief purveyor of cinematic fiction in the Arab world. More
|
|
|
Al-Takheekh (The Shooter)
2007. Palestine. Written and directed by Ihab Jadallah. 8 min.
Sat, Oct 8, 7:30 - T2
Wed, Oct 19, 4:00 - T2
Palestine is occupied by the international media. It is being staged by the international media for sensational newscasts and Palestinians have become "performers" of dramatic international evening newscasts.
The Shooter questions the Palestinian resistance struggle and its decadence, reaching the point of the actual chaos and lack of control.
More
|
|
|
Ouarzazate (Ouarzazate, the Movie)
2001. Morocco/France. Written and directed by Ali Essafi. 57 min
Sat, Oct 8, 7:30 (Introduced by Essafi) - T2
Wed, Oct 19, 4:00 - T2
In this offering from director Ali Essafi, the film culture surrounding Ouarzazate, Morocco is skewered, revealing the cynicism and cluelessness of producers and international film moguls fascinated by the exotic local yet completely unaware of the local culture. This bitingly comic documentary is a portrait of a small Moroccan town whose economy is driven by the many movie crews drawn by its exotic desert scenery. Turning his camera on crabby casting directors for an Italian biblical epic, would-be extras in Astérix et Obélix and an old local hand who once carried Pasolini’s bags, Essafi cannily skewers the international film industry and the disparity between movie magic and economic reality. More
|
|
|
Anya: Straight Stories, Part 2
2008. Morocco/France. Directed by Bouchra Khalili. 12 min.
Sun, Oct 9, 2:00 - T2
Thu, Oct 20, 7:00 - T2
"Anya (Straight Stories – Part 2)" is the continuation of Bouchra Khalili’s ongoing project Straight Stories, initiated in 2006. While the first part focuses on the Strait of Gibraltar between Spain and Morocco, "Anya" considers the Strait of Istanbul as both a physical border between two continents (Europe and Asia) and an imaginary one. Since the 1990s, the Strait of Istanbul, intended as a temporary stop for migrants in ¬transit, waiting before going further west has become a permanent terminus. Khalili explores through spatial and visual fragments the story of a young Iraqi woman who has been waiting in this area for a visa to Australia since 1996. More
|
|
|
VHS Kahloucha
2006. Tunisia. Directed by Néjib Belkadhi. 80 min.
Sun, Oct 9, 2:00 - T2
Thu, Oct 20, 7:00 - T2
Amateur Tunisian filmmaker Moncef Kahloucha is the subject of this documentary that rolls at least three films into one. Belkadhi’s VHS Kahloucha follows Kahloucha as he produces, directs and showcases his new feature film, buying props and casting parts, shooting, editing, and finally premiering Tarzan of the Arabs, that turns out indeed as humorous, imaginative, and action-packed as Kahloucha promises throughout. Belkadhi’s charming documentary is an elegy to the empowering magnetism of cinema and the passions it inspires driving a working class house painter to appropriate and reproduce classics of Hollywood cinema in his humble neighborhood with its residents.
More
|
|
|
Al Jabal (The Mountain)
2010. Lebanon/Qatar. Written and directed by Ghassan Salhab. 84 min.
Sun, Oct 9, 5:00 - T2
Thu, Oct 20, 4:00 - T2
A forty-something man (Fadi Abi Samra) is being driven to the Beirut International Airport. Suitcase in hand, he pauses for a few seconds in the middle of the airport’s hustle — then suddenly turns around, rents a car and leaves. In the wintery landscape of Lebanon’s countryside, he drives north to the mountains. The man does not seem to be acting on impulse. He reaches a hotel that looks completely deserted in the off-season. Locked in his room, he closes the windows and shutters, gradually surrendering to the state of near-total isolation he seemed eager to create. Days and nights pass, and the man experiences a series of intense emotional states while remaining almost mute. Is he atoning? Expiating a sin or a crime? Hiding out? Sorting through an intense personal crisis? Does it matter? More
|
|
|
6/12
1968. Morocco. Directed by Ahmed Bouanani, Abdelmajid R’chich, Mohamed Abderrahman Tazi. 18 min.
Sun, Oct 9, 7:30 - T2
Fri, Oct 21, 4:00 - T2
“We chose images in a city, moments: absence and the solitude of wet cobblestones at a dull party that has ended; suddenly a shade; suddenly a gesture, a footstep; the sea or silence; silence or the cry; waiting or dread; sleep or insomnia; a sign of light that surges; a heart caught between two digits; our faces in the storm; two white-hot figures carved on foreheads; eyes, bodies spinning round like magnets in the storm” (Ahmed Bouanani).
More
|
|
|
Alyam, Alyam! (Oh, The Days!)
1978. Morocco. Directed by Ahmed el-Maânouni. 80 min.
Sun, Oct 9, 7:30 (Introduced by el-Maanouni) - T2
Fri, Oct 21, 4:00 - T2
The first Moroccan film to be selected at the Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard), Oh the Days!, tells the story of a young peasant, Abdelwahed, who dreams of breaking away from the trappings of poverty of life in the Moroccan countryside. He applies for immigration to France and dreams of a bright and prosperous future. His mother, Halima, recently widowed and entrusted with raising seven children, is opposed to her eldest son leaving. As the two argue, the papers don’t come, and El Maânouni draws a poignantly real but eloquent portrayal of everyday life and labor in the countryside. Movements, gestures, rhythms and testimonials are filmed with the sustained attentiveness of documentary, elegant and admiring, they blend gently into the narrative’s dramatic fabric. In the filmmaker’s hands, the portrait soon becomes elegiac, captivating. In Abdelwahed’s eyes, that same reality is hopeless, without prospect. Oh the Days! was awarded at the Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage, FESPACO and the Taormina Film Festival. More
|
|
|
Gabbla (Inland)
2008. Algeria. Directed by Tariq Teguia. 138 min.
Mon, Oct 10, 2:00 (Introduced by Teguia) - T2
Sun, Oct 16, 5:00 - T2
Malek, a taciturn and reclusive topographer, sets out to survey a remote area in western Algeria that until recently was deemed a stronghold for radical Islamists, but seems entirely deserted now, with the mandate to study the installation of electrical cables in the area. As we follow him in the desert, the camera moves slowly, the quiet of the vast expanse guiding the camera, and yet an overwhelming sense of eeriness transpires from the film. These sequences are interspersed with hand-held footage outtakes of young Algerians protesting their living conditions in the city, the words “wrath”, “frustration” and “violence” filling the screen. Mysterious elements and incidents begin to happen, explosions in the middle of night, blood stains in a metal shack, swarms of policemen prowling. When he finds a young African woman hiding in his trailer, he understands that the region is on the path of immigrants without papers traveling to Europe. With a simple straightforward plot, minimal dialogue, stunning cinematography, Inland mirrors the paradoxes of political life in present-day Algeria. Some sequences are silent, others set to a raucous soundtrack mixing alternative rock, Nigerian afrobeat and raï, they both underscore an other-worldly sense of the landscape’s vastness. The influence of Italian masters, Antonioni and Pasolini, permeates this luminous, dense yet transporting film.
More
|
|
|
Nujum an-Nahar (Stars in Broad Daylight).
1988. Syria. Written and directed by Oussama Mohammad. 115 min.
Mon, Oct 10, 4:30 (Introduced by Mohammad) - T2
Sun, Oct 23, 7:00 - T2
A double wedding in a small village turns to high drama when one bride runs away and the other refuses to go on with her marriage. The drama unveils the fragile balance holding together a family strained by an abusive father now replaced by the successful but corrupt eldest son, a pathologically enraged second son, and the troubles of the youngest son, rendered deaf by a violent blow his father dealt him as a child. Ultimately tragic, the film is rife with biting humor and sharp political critique as it exposes how the violence of arbitrary and absolute power in a patriarchal society seeps into the unit of a family. Stars in Broad Daylight, Ousama Mohammad's first long feature, remains banned from screening in Syria because of its subversive representation and critical voice. Selected at the «Quinzai More
|
|
|
Tahia Ya Didou! (Long Live The Man!)
1971. Algeria. Directed by Mohamed Zinet. 76 min.
Mon, Oct 10, 7:30 - T2
Sat, Oct 15, 7:30 - T2
Tahia Ya Didou!, a film from major playwright and actor Mohamed Zinet, presents an engaging hodgepodge of documentary and fictional styles, the visuals accompanied by the recitation of poetry. Released in 1971, this virtually unclassifiable film is a mixture of documentary and narrative shots telling the story of a newly independent Algeria. The narrative cleverly juxtaposes scenes of a freshly sovereign population against various run-ins with the police state, humorously outlining the trials and tribulations facing the country. Considered a cult hit in its home country, the film provides a crucial window into post-colonial Algerian society. More
|
|
|
El Madina (The City)
1999. Egypt/France. Directed by Yousry Nasrallah. 108 min.
Fri, Oct 14, 4:00 - T2
Sun, Oct 23, 2:00 - T1
Ali, a young man from Rod al-Farag, one of Cairo’s many working poor neighborhoods, dreams of becoming an actor, an entirely unlikely aspiration in the universe in which he lives. As the wholesale fruit and vegetable market from which he makes a living is to be relocated to al-Ubur, to the far edges of Cairo, his life is about to take a turn. He is pressed by family and friends to accept what life has served him, and face the dim prospect of down payments and moving his trade to the new inhospitable neighborhood. Instead, he chooses to rebel and escapes to France. With false papers, he finds work as a boxer in rigged matches, and learns that acting and lying are not the same thing”, and that Paris, is after all, not so different from Cairo. More
|
|
|
Tayyeb, Khalas, Yalla (Okay, Enough, Goodbye)
2011. Lebanon/USA/UAE. Written and directed by Rania Attieh, Daniel Garcia. 93 min.
Fri, Oct 14, 7:00 (Introduced by Attieh, Garcia) - T2
Sat, Oct 22, 5:00 - T2
In the small, tightly nit city of Tripoli, Lebanon, where family bonds run very deep, a forty-year-old man still lives with his elderly mother and has given up on the idea of becoming independent. But when one day his mother suddenly leaves him, the man is left with nothing but the company of the small city and what it offers.
While making sure to keep his mother's absence a secret from the people around him, the man wanders aimlessly through his days, struggling to keep himself occupied, and to make sense of his newfound independence. He moves from day to day, seeking out the company of strangers and acquaintances, grudgingly befriending a neighboring 6-year-old boy, and beginning an awkward relationship with a prostitute who contacted him via text messages. While accompanying a friend to an office for foreign contracted maids, the man hastily agrees to take an Ethiopian maid for himself, regardless of the fact that she doesn't speak his language. But when the relationship with his maid quickly turns sour due to an inability to communicate with her, the man is left to regret his actions and seeks out a way to rectify his situation.
It is a coming of age story of an adult man, who is finding his comfort for the first time, alone, in the city he grew up in. More
|
|
|
Tablod’bord (Dashboard)
2006. Algeria. Directed by Ammar Bouras. Screenplay by Adlène Méddi. 24 min.
Sat, Oct 15, 4:30 - T2
Sat, Oct 22, 8:00 - T1
Dashboard is a wholehearted collaboration between visual artist Bouras and journalist and author Méddi, who both live in the heart of Algiers, a city that fascinates and unsettles them with its sunlit beauty and infernal darkness. The camera, fixed on the dashboard of a taxi traveling through the streets of Algiers, is at once the eye and soul of these two artists, who plumb the city—and themselves—for answers about love, death, nationhood, violence, sex, and exile. More
|
|
|
Tango el-Amal (Tango of Yearning)
1998. Lebanon. Directed by Mohamed Soueid. 70 min.
Sat, Oct 15, 4:30 (Introduced by Soueid) - T2
Sat, Oct 22, 8:00 - T1
Borrowing the film’s title from Tango of Hope, a classic ballad by Nur al-Huda, the filmmaker attempts to reconstruct the scattered traces of his many passions—love affairs, cinema, the city of Beirut—in the shadow of civil war. Unabashedly subjective and sentimental, Soueid’s film mulls the paradoxes of life and the capriciousness of memory, concluding with a meditation on hurt and forgiveness. More
|
|
|
Ma Hataftu li Ghayriha (My Heart Beats Only for Her)
2008. Lebanon. Directed by Mohamed Soueid.87 min.
Sun, Oct 16, 2:00 (Introduced by Soueid) - T2
Sat, Oct 23, 5:30 - T1
Through the fictional story of a son reconstructing his father’s revolutionary past from a diary, the filmmaker draws a nonfiction portrait of two generations of men, fathers and sons, revolutionaries of the 1970s and technicians of the dream-industries. This is a poetic flight in time, back to when young men dreamed of changing the world with their own hands, and forward to a present where young men just want the security of a salaried job. More
|
|
|
" Written in the Dust"
Modern Mondays: An Evening with Mohamed Soueid
October 17, 2011
In conjunction with Mapping Subjectivity, Mohamed Soueid (b. Lebanon, 1959) presents his performance/ slide lecture Written in the Dust. A pioneer of Lebanese independent and experimental video production, Soueid began his career writing film criticism in the 1970s. He worked as assistant director to a number of filmmakers before directing his first film, Absence (1990), which is believed to be the first independent video production in Lebanon. Two of his subsequent features, Tango of Yearning (1998) and My Heart Beats Only for Her (2009), are also presented as part of the exhibition.
Written in the Dust proposes a bold, uncanny coupling of Middle Eastern history—particularly the Lebanese civil war—with the history of cinema. Narrated in the first person and woven with autobiographical elements, the work caustically challenges received canons and conventional paradigms, but beyond the humor is a bold proposal for a radical rewriting of regional and personal history. More
|
|
|
Archives, Appropriation, and Montage:
Rewriting History and the Personal in Arab Film
October 13, 2011
This roundtable discussion focuses on the reflection of modernity in contemporary Middle Eastern cinema, with a particular focus on the reconstitution and appropriation of social, political, and personal perspectives of history through the use of found footage. Participants include film critic and historian Jean-Michel Frodon, independent film and visual arts curator and writer Rasha Salti, artist and filmmaker Rania Stephan, and scholar Karim Tartoussieh. Organized in conjunction with the exhibition Mapping Subjectivity: Experimentation in Arab Cinema, 1960–Now, Part II.
(Presented in collaboration with MoMA’s Department of Education)
Click through to see a video of the event: More
|
|
|
