VISUALIZING THE MIDDLE EAST & NORTH AFRICA
FILM, DOCUMENTARIES AND EXPERIMENTAL VIDEO SCREENINGS
ORGANIZED BY THE MENA WORKING GROUP AT TNS (SPRING 2016)
ROOM 1009, 6 EAST 16TH STREET
The MENA Working Group is an informal network of graduate students and faculty members working at The New School (NSSR, Parsons, Milano) and concentrating their research on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), broadly construed. Launched in October 2015, the Working Group organizes a graduate student conference on April 22nd and hopes to serve the needs and interests of graduate students at TNS. With this series of films, the MENA Working Group offers a space of discussion open to all New School students, Lang and graduate researchers. The screenings are free and will generally be held Thursdays, 8-10p, followed by a peer-led discussion. Organizer: Salma Shamel Bakr Faculty contact point: Benoit Challand
THURSDAY 25TH OF FEBRUARY
INTRODUCTION TO THE END OF AN ARGUMENT
Elia Suleiman And Jayce Salloum
1990 | 40 minutes | Palestine / USA / Europe / Israel
A dive into archival material from Hollywood, European and Israeli film, documentary, animation, news coverage and excerpts of ‘live’ footage shotin the West Bank and Gaza strip, Introduction to the End of an Argument critiques the representation of the Middle East, Arab culture, and the Pales-
tinian people produced by the West in an incredibly witty way.
MONDIAL 2010
Roy Dib
2013 | 19 minutes | Palestine
Mondial 2010 is a film on love and place. A Lebanese gay couple decides to take a road trip to Ramallah. The film is recorded with their camera as they chronicle their journey. The viewers are invited through the couple’s conversations into the universe of a fading city.
THURSDAY 3RD OF MARCH
MOSIREEN MEDIA COLLECTIVE | EGYPT (45 minutes)
The People demand the fall of the regime (4 minutes) + The Camel Battle (9 minutes) + The Maspero Massacre (9 minutes) + Don’t Mess with the People (2 minutes) + The Privatization of Ramlet Bulaq (8 minutes) + Why Riot (5 minutes) + Army vs Qorsaya (4 minutes) + Prayer of Fear (4 minutes) Mosireen is a non-profit media collective in Downtown Cairo born out of the explosion of citizen media and cultural activism in Egypt during the revolution. The videos were created between 2011 and 2014.
KARAMA HAS NO WALLS
Sarah Ishaq
2012 | 26 minutes | Yemen
Nominated for best short documentary at the Academy Award, Karama Has No Walls is a powerful film that illustrates the Yemeni revolution, focusing on Friday of Dignity on March 18th of 2011, the day that marked the tragic events when pro-government snipers shot dead 53 protesters.
THURSDAY 10TH OF MARCH
THE TIME THAT REMAINS
Elia Suleiman
2009 | 1hr 49 minutes | Palestine
In four episodes, Suleiman recounts family stories inspired by his father Fuad’s private diaries starting from when he was a resistance fighter in 1948, and his mother’s letters to family members who were forced to leave the country during the same period. In addition, Suleiman also combines his own memories in an attempt to provide a portrait of the daily life of the Palestinians who were labeled “Israeli-Arabs” after they chose to remain in their country and become a minority.
THURSDAY 17TH OF MARCH
MY FATHER IS STILL A COMMUNIST
Ahmad Ghossein
2011 | 32 minutes | Lebanon
All that is left of my parents’ relationship is a large number of audio cassettes, sent as love letters during the time of civil war in Lebanon. WhenI was a child I created imaginative stories about my father as war hero fighting with the communists.
IN THIS HOUSE
Akram Zaatari
2005 | 30 minutes | Lebanon
Following the Israeli withdrawal from Ain el Mir in 1985, the village became the frontline. The Dagher family was displaced from their home, which was occupied by a radical resistance group for seven years. When the war ended in 1991, Ali Hashisho, a member of the Lebanese resistance stationed in the Dagher family house, wrote a letter to them justifying his occupation there, and welcoming them back home.
ABOUNADDARA COLLECTIVE | SYRIA (22 MINUTES)
Child who saw Islamic State (3 minutes) + The Battle of Aleppo
(10 minutes) + Islamic State for Dummies (3 minutes) + Woman in
Pants (4 minutes) + The Sniper (2 minutes)
Abounaddara is a collective of self-taught and volunteer filmmakers involved in emergency cinema.
THURSDAY 7TH OF APRIL
THE INFILTRATORS
Khaled Jarrar
2012 | 70 minutes | Palestine
The checkpoint is closed. “Detour, detour!” shouts a taxi driver and announces the beginning of the journey. The film unravels adventures of various attempts by individuals and groups during their search for gaps in the Wall in order to permeate and sneak past it.
THURSDAY 14TH OF APRIL
POSTHUME (POSTHUMOUS)
Ghassan Salhab
2007 | 28 minutes | Lebanon
Following on from the 2006 Israeli aggression on Lebanon, the filmmaker tries to film the destruction of Beirut. We witness a city deserted by life, and ghostly characters who, featured in his earlier films, talk about living through such a war.
THOUGH I KNOW THE RIVER IS DRY
Omar Robert Hamilton
2014 | 19 minutes | Palestine
The film tells the story of a man’s return to Palestine years after making a decision to emigrate to America. The story is told through parallel timelines, interweaved with archival footage.
HAVE YOU EVER KILLED A BEAR? OR BECOMING JAMILA
Marwa Arsanios
2014 | 25 minutes | Egypt/Algeria/Lebanon
A video that uses the history of a magazine – Cairo’s Al-Hilal ‘50s and ‘60s collection – as the starting point for an inquiry into Jamila Bouhired, the Algerian freedom fighter. From the different representations of Jamila in cinema to her assimilation and promotion through the magazine, the performance attempts to look at the history of socialist projects in Egypt, anti-colonial wars in Algeria, and the way they have promoted and mar-
ginalized feminist projects.
DETAIL
Avi Mograbi
2004 | 8 minutes | Israel
Detail is indeed a detail. It is an excerpt from Mograbi’s feature film Avenge But One of My Two Eyes, where human conditions face military situations. This is a detail of the reality as lived by Palestinians and Israelis daily in Israel and the Occupied Territories. This “detail” is what makes life unbearable.
THURSDAY 28TH OF APRIL
MULBERRY HOUSE
Sarah Ishaq
2013 | 75 minutes | Yemen
Sara returns to Yemen after several years. Arriving at the heart of an emerging revolution, she redefines her place in Yemeni society, as well as her relationship with her father and grandfather. In a unique examination of the uprisings in Yemen, THE MULBERRY HOUSE shifts the focus from events on the street to the impact of the revolution on the lives of one family.
Tags: class of 2016, Design Studies, documentaries, Exhibitions, Film, MENA Film Series