February 2022
Assia Djebar
South West Asia and North Africa, there are historical records of women’s cinema since the 1920s. However, a lack of state funding for archival projects, as well as factors such as conflict and war, mean that we often watch these films through reading about them. The films themselves are inaccessible, or more often damaged or…
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…
October 2021
Moumen Smihi, Mohammad Malas
RADICAL MODERNISMS: RETRACING ARAB AND NORTH AFRICAN FILM HISTORIES is a two-part program curated by Peter Limbrick, Professor of Film and Digital Media at UC Santa Cruz and author of Arab Modernism as World Cinema: The Films of Moumen Smihi. This program addresses aesthetic and cultural experiments that emerged in Arab and North African cinema from the 1960s, experiments…
Ahmed Bouanani, Mostafa Derkaoui
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…
Mohamed Soueid
, 2000
, 70 min
Synopsis: In 1975, a group of young Lebanese men joined the Palestinian organization “Fateh”. Known as the “Student Brigade”, they participated in the Lebanese Civil War. Some of them were killed, others left the country. Following the Israeli invasion in 1982, Palestinian armed forces left Lebanon. The “Student Brigade” dissoluted and the young Lebanese fighters have…
August 2021
Carol Mansour, Charbel Samuel Aoun, Wael Noureddine, Ali Cherri
Marking the one-year anniversary of the devastating Beirut blast, this program of films and videos from Lebanese artists and filmmakers conveys their direct experience assimilating the overwhelming experience of loss and trauma. Two of the works are a response to the Beirut blast, which shook the city on August 4, 2020, while the other two…
Carol Mansour
, 2020
, 17 min
Shattered: Beirut 6:07 synopsis: Two months after the massive explosion that devastated Beirut, the inhabitants of the city are still reeling from the force of the blast and the accumulated evil they have been subjected to for decades. Carol Mansour explored her city in the aftermath of the blast, talking to friends and exchanging reflections on…
