ArteEast is excited to announce the U.S premiere of Memory Box by Joana Hadjithomas And Khalil Joreige at Film Forum starting August 5!
All 7:40 pm shows from August 5 – 11 will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers recorded especially for this event. The Q&A is co-presented by ArteEast, and moderated by ArteEast Film Programs Curator Ginou Choueiri.
SPECIAL DISCOUNTED TICKETS FOR ARTEEAST AUDIENCES! USE THE PROMO CODE ARTEEAST AT CHECKOUT.
For tickets and more information go here
Memory Box, Joana Hadjithomas And Khalil Joreige, France / Lebanon, 2021, 102 min.
In French, English, and Arabic with English Subtitles.
An inventive multi-media, multi-generational drama that toggles between 1983 war-torn Beirut and present-day Montreal. A teenage girl intercepts a mysterious package addressed to her mother. Defying her grandmother’s protective instincts and determined to break through her mother’s secrecy and stoicism, she surreptitiously immerses herself in the box’s contents. Her mother’s scrapbooks, letters, and audio recordings from her own heady youth, vibrant with romantic euphoria, political happenings, and familial despair, fill the young girl’s imagination and spark her need to know more about her historical-emotional lineage. The story processes media of the past via modes of the present: emoji-filled texts, emails, and smartphone snapshots.
Directors Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige are known not only for their film work – THE LEBANESE ROCKET SOCIETY, A PERFECT DAY, and JE VEUX VOIR (featuring Catherine Deneuve and Rabih Mroué) – but for their art installations and long-term research based on personal or political documents, with particular interest in “hidden histories.” Among their major artworks, Circle of Confusion (1997), Lasting Images (2003), The Lebanese Rocket Society (2011), SCAMS (2014), I Stared at Beauty So Much (2016), and Uncomformities (2017), showcased at the Centre George Pompidou (Paris) and awarded the prestigious Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2017. They have presented their works in solo exhibitions at Beirut Exhibition Center (Beirut), Haus der Kunst (Munich), HOME (Manchester), IVAM (Valencia), Jeu de Paume (Paris), MIT List Visual Arts Center (Cambridge), Museum of Modern Art (Paris), Powerplant (Toronto), Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE), and Villa Arson (Nice), as well as group exhibitions in museums and art centers around the world.