Ali Eyal, Sarah Munaf, Rijin Sahakian, Bassim Al Shaker, Sajjad Abbas
, 2022
, 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,…
Hiba Bassem
, 2005
, 34 min
Hiba Bassem is a film student from Kirkuk, who returns to Baghdad after the war in order to continue her film studies and films a video diary turned documentary of her experiences. She struggles to find housing, negotiates her feelings about the Iraqi elections, thinks about her relationships, and attempts to find a place in…
Kifayah Saleh
, 12 min
A group of Iraqi artist wanted to establish a cultural center in Baghdad, but plans were continually put off due to war. Finally, the artists decided to set up the Hiwar Centre in an old house in 1992, and it became a meeting place for artists and creatives to talk, leave each other messages, exhibit…
Ahmed Jabbar
, 2007
, 15 min
Dr. Nabil is a surgeon in Baghdad and has stayed to help victims of explosions, kidnappings, and other circumstances during the war of Iraq. Many other doctors have left, for fear of assasination, but Dr. Nabil works through the fear and other setbacks onset by the war in Iraq. Not only is he a surgeon,…
, 11 min
Hiba Bassem contemplates the years of war she has faced through conversations with her family and friends, and through her time spent living at home. She documents the mental and physical exhaustion faced by Iraqis after years of war, reaching everyone, even those as young as her little sisters.
May 2023
Randa Chahal Sabbag
A key figure in Lebanese cinema, as both a documentary filmmaker and a director of fictional narratives, Randa Chahal Sabbag was born in Tripoli, Lebanon in 1953, to a Christian mother and a Sunni Muslim father, both militants involved in the local communist party. It was her father who introduced Chahal to the cinema, at…
, 1979
, 80 min
Synopsis: This film is the result of two years of work, from February 1976 to March 1978. Through its analysis, and through certain documents, it looks beyond the period to grasp at the remote causes of the conflict. It attempts to draft a timeline of events: the dismemberment of Lebanon, the liquidation of the Palestinian movement,…
, 1992
, 90 min
Synopsis: A city emerges in the middle of the desert and dies in its richness. Women are doubly veiled, and freedoms are even more threatened. Sarah was born the day after the oil boom. She is part of the generation that believes it can get anything with the power of money, and that simultaneously sees its…
, 2000
, 97 min
Synopsis: During the civil war, some Lebanese fled to Europe, leaving their large apartments, luxurious houses, and their servants: Sri Lankans, Filipinos, Egyptians “imported” to serve by the thousands. These and many more must deal with the maverick who controls the building, its occupants, the neighborhood, and a few areas of the city. Their lives intersect:…
, 1995
, 68 min
Synopsis: Beirut, September 1994. With the civil war, which started in 1975, having ended just two years before, the systematic reconstruction of the city begins. Coming from a family which has been politically and militarily involved in the conflict, Chahal depicts seventeen years of war in a very personal way. She uses her own archives, family…
