August 2022
Kaya Behkalam, Azin Feizabadi, Arvand Dashtaray
REHEARSING REALITY showcases a selection of films that blend fact and fiction, blurring the line between the staged and the improvised. Featuring works by Azin Feizabadi /Kaya Behkalam, and Arvand Dashtaray. This program is co-presented by ArteEast and Rooftop Films. This series is part of the legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, which preserves and presents over 17 years of film and video programming by ArteEast. In…
June 2022
Annemarie, Enas I. Al-Muthaffar, Nahed Awwad, Ayreen Anastas, Larissa Sansour
The Second Intifada heralded a particularly fresh, urgent and experimental approach to filmmaking, in tune with the uprisings to which they contributed. Working at a distance from both the main political organizations and, often, the aesthetic insistences of Global Northern art cinema funding, filmmakers took advantage of accessible technologies to forge new notions of freedom. The prolific…
April 2022
Yto Barrada, Malak Helmy, Lara Baladi, Marianne Fahmy, Maha Maamoun, Setareh Shahbazi
Monuments & Flowers Curated by Regine Basha Monuments & Flowers brings together a selection of seminal video work by women artists culled from the archives of ArteEast with the work of contemporary voices including Yto Barrada, Lara Baladi, Marianne Fahmy, Malak Helmy Maha Maamoun and Setareh Shahbazi with Mirene Arsanios. How do we reflect upon…
Setareh Shahbazi
, 2017
, 19 min
ANTEDOOM translates the unrepresentable brutality of our daily newsfeeds into an artistic language that peels away from single occurrences and describes a specific feeling of strain compared to the anxious moment before a medical diagnosis is announced. Derived from the term Anteroom – a small outer room used as a waiting room for medical inspections…
November 2021
Akram Zaatari, Emily Jacir, Mona Benyamin
Ib’atli Gawab / Signed, Sealed, Delivered: On longing and political resistance through epistolary forms in four essay-films. Inspired by two love songs—Sabah Fakhri’s Ib’atli Gawab (Arabic for “send an answer my way”) and Stevie Wonder’s Signed, Sealed, Delivered—this program explores the affective and political potential of letter-writing and other epistolary forms through four films by Mona Benyamin, Emily…
September 2021
Mohamed Soueid, Walid Raad, Jayce Salloum
RECONSTRUCTING HISTORIES examines the role of the documentary in representing the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990) through the experimental works of three important Lebanese post-war artists/filmmakers: Walid Raad, Jayce Salloum, and Mohamad Soueid. The Lebanese Civil War officially ended after the 1989 Taif Accord, granting amnesty to those who committed war crimes, allowing these same figures to…
Walid Raad
, 2001
, 16 min
Synopsis:Hostage: The Bachar Tapes (English Version) is an experimental documentary about “The Western Hostage Crisis.” The crisis refers to the abduction and detention of Westerners like Terry Anderson, and Terry Waite in Lebanon in the 80s and early 90s by “Islamic militants.” This episode directly and indirectly consumed Lebanese, U.S., French, and British political and public…
Jayce Salloum
, 49 min
Synopsis: This film at the most fundamental level, a personal project; i) examining the use and production of images/representations of Lebanon and Beirut both in the West and in Lebanon itself, ii) recording the interactions and experiences while working in Lebanon, focusing on the undertaking of this representational process as a Lebanese and a westernized, foreign-born…
Meriem Bennani
, 2018
, 26 min
Party on the CAPSParty on the CAPS synopsis: In a world where teleportation has replaced planes, a wacky crocodile named Fiona tells of life on the CAPS: an island-turned-refugee-camp for illegal immigrants caught mid-teleportation. Themes of displacement, biotechnology and privacy are evoked through the augmented reality of a raucous birthday party in the Moroccan quarter of the…
Larissa Sansour
, 2012
, 9 min
Nation Estate synopsis: With its glossy mixture of computer-generated imagery, live actors, and an arabesque electronica soundtrack, the Nation Estate film explores a vertical solution to Palestinian statehood. Palestinians have their state in the form of a single skyscraper: the Nation Estate. One colossal high-rise houses the entire Palestinian population – now finally living the high life.
