Kaya Behkalam, Azin Feizabadi
, 2010
, 38 min
The Negotiation examines scenarios of political conflict through a staged negotiation in a UN Security Council-like set. The script presents a group of actors with a three-act drama on an unspecified revolutionary situation. They proceed to rehearse and embody both their real and scripted characters — the boundaries between fictional and factual histories, individual and collective…
Christian Ghazi
, 1969
, 63 min
Made in 1969 and released in 1972, Christian Ghazi’s incendiary, avant-garde masterpiece is one of the filmmaker’s only two surviving early works. Through this fiction documentary hybrid film, Ghazi forged a stinging critique of bourgeois society in Beirut during Lebanon’s Golden Age (which would end in 1975 with a grueling and protracted civil war). An…
Jumana Manna
, 21 min
Blessed Blessed Oblivion weaves together a portrait of masculine performativity in East Jerusalem, manifested in gyms, auto body shops, and hairdressing parlors. Inspired by Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising (1963), the video uses visual collage and music as ironic commentary. Anger’s subjects—leather-clad bikers—serve as a counterpoint to the culture Manna attempts to portray, that of male “thug” culture in East Jerusalem. Simultaneously…
Marwa Arsanios
, 2008
, 5 min
Built by Polish architect Karol Schayer in 1957, the iconic Carlton Hotel was, in its time, a popular meeting place for gay men in Beirut. Between 1973 and 1993, the hotel was also the setting of three murders that might or might not have been related to sexual encounters. Among the victims of these (probably) passionate…
Inna Sahakyan
, 2022
, 78 min
A genocide survivor becomes a silent movie star: Aurora Mardiganian’s odyssey is close to unreal. After losing her family, escaping slavery, and enduring Hollywood greed, she journeys far to tell the world of the Armenian Genocide.
Yousef Srouji
Three Promises is the poignant story of a mother and her camera, a son and his suppressed memories, and an entire country. Suha, the mother, documents daily family life during the tumultuous times of the second intifada in the West Bank. As her family frequently seeks refuge underground, Suha makes promises to God in the hopes…
Kaveh Nabatian
, 56 min
In 1791, in Haiti, Dutty Boukman presided over a Vodou ritual in Bois-Caïman that led to the creation of the first Black republic. Since then, rituals of transformation and artistic expression have been at the core of a thriving culture as the country faces foreign oppression, poverty, and natural disasters. “Kite Zo A” is a…
Djibril Diop Mambéty
, 1994
Marigo the musician dreams of his instrument – a congoma – which his landlady has impounded because of his chronic rent non-payments. Getting hold of a lottery ticket, he decides to put it in a safe place while awaiting the drawing: he glues it to the back of his door and covers it with the…
, 2020
, 95 min
A young, impoverished Afro-Cuban couple dreams of wealth and success. A Canadian Iranian-Jewish divorcée yearns for personal freedom. These three lives converge in Sin La Habana, a film in which power, money, creativity, and destiny intertwine into a passionate love triangle, with a hint of magic, where cultures clash in a torrid dance. Leo, a…
July 2024
Kaveh Nabatian, Djibril Diop Mambéty
TRACES OF THE UNKNOWN brings together films addressing the human condition through stories and mysterious occurrences connected to spirits and gods derived from West African and Afro-caribbean diasporic religions. Featuring Djibril Diop Mambety’s Le Franc (1994) and Kaveh Nabatian’s Sin La Habana(2020) and Kite Zo A (2023), the filmmakers present narratives rooted in temporal realities and contexts, revealing cycles as well as…
