September 2023
Larissa Sansour, Marwa Benhalim, Alia Yunis
Screening Online: Sept 27-Oct 1RSVP: arabfilmseries.org Free with RSVP / $5 suggested donationAvailable Worldwide THERE IS SALT AND BREAD BETWEEN US presents a selection of films by Larissa Sansour, Youmna Chlala, Alia Yunis, Andrea Nones-Kobiakov, and Marwa Benhalim. The films are centered around the theme of food, which is employed as a vehicle to explore political and cultural narratives. Trespass…
Larissa Sansour
, 2012
, 12 min
Through this intimate and fictionalized dinner, an impossible happening becomes real. The work explores cultural fabrications and similarities in a non-mediated moment outside the Western gaze – even if the space it seeks is invariably conditioned by it. This work was initially a 3-channel video installation.
Marwa Benhalim
, 2020
The Devil’s Recipe is a collaboration between Andrea Nones-Kobiakov and Marwa Benhalim – a playful view of the nonsensicality within political discourses. Mundane everyday objects, actions, ingredients, and utterances emphasize the redundant and useless nature of propagandistic speeches. The reality in the spoken words is mixed to create new fictions, proverbs, idioms, and linguistic manipulations…
Mounira Al Solh
, 2019
, 43 min
The artist spent 24 hours with each of four women—Rogine, Waad, Hanin, and Zeina—in the cities where they now live: Zutphen, Oslo, Washington DC, and Sharjah respectively. All four of them cannot live anymore in their countries of origin, Syria and Lebanon. Together, they share a moment of cooking, rolling on the floors of their…
July 2023
Darine Hotait, Randa Ali, Reem Jubran, Lily Ekimian Ragheb and Ahmed T. Ragheb, Zayn Alexander, Jenna Mahmoud-Bosco, Shayma Aziz
PRAYER OF THE WANDERER is a short film program that explores the complex and multifaceted experiences of Arab American immigrants in their pursuit of identity within the context of living in the United States. By delving into their narratives, this event seeks to shed light on the richness and diversity of Arab American cultural heritage…
Zayn Alexander
, 2018
, 9 min
Jad and Rania, a Lebanese couple living in New York City, struggle to achieve their shared dream of breaking into the acting industry due, in part, to the typecasting of Middle-Eastern actors. The combined pressures of juggling multiple day jobs and living so far from home begin to eat away at Jad, while Rania relishes…
Randa Ali
, 2022
, 15 min
Ali, a young Egyptian living in self-exile in Los Angeles is visited by a memory of an old friend. Together they try to make sense of a past haunted by trauma and a present that makes no sense.
Lily Ekimian Ragheb and Ahmed T. Ragheb
, 2021
, 11 min
An Egyptian living and working in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, reflects on his new surroundings through a series of images and observations. The resulting montage is a poignant cinematic postcard that explores the contradictory nature of the immigrant experience: at once lonely, frightening, and exhilarating.
Reem Jubran
, 13 min
Zaid, a young Arab-American amateur drag queen, has to confront his conservative father and ailing grandfather about his identity.
Sajjad Abbas, Ali Eyal, Sarah Munaf, Rijin Sahakian, Bassim Al Shaker
, 54 min
From 2011-2015, Sada, an online and in-person ad hoc art school, was set up in Baghdad to support artists working through the aftermath of US-led invasion and occupation. Nearly a decade later, former artists of Sada came together again, reflecting on their creative and disparate lives since that time. Artists Sajjad Abbas, Bassim Al Shaker,…
