Thu, March 29, 7:00pm
Poetic Injustice: Short Films from the Arab World
Michigan Theater (Screening Room)
Curator Irina Leimbacher will present films and videos from the past 25 years from Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, and Morocco.
What does it mean to speak one’s history and the dreams and nightmares that inevitably accompany it? How is history told, and perhaps more importantly, how is it felt? These six short films from the Arab world take very different approaches. From familial intimacies to unfamiliar leaps of the imagination, from straightforward cartographic narratives to twisted and brilliant allegories, each work forcefully and passionately evokes political realities that, for the most part, still define our world today.
Community Partner: Arab American National Museum of Dearborn
Films Showing:
The Dead Weight of a Quarrel Hangs
(Walid Raad, 1998)
This piece investigates the possibilities and limits of writing a history of the Lebanese civil wars (1975-1991). The videos offer accounts of the fantastic situations that beset a number of...
Slippage
(Ali Cherri, 2007)
A reflection on the aftermath of the war: is it time to abandon Beirut, now that it has abandoned itself? Filmed in 2006 during the July War between Lebanon and Israel...
Measures of Distance
(Mona Hatoum, 1988)
In this resonant work, Palestinian-born video and performance artist Mona Hatoum explores the renewal of friendship between mother and daughter during a brief family reunion in war-torn Lebanon in 1981....
Chic Point
(Sharif Waked, 2003)
Chic Point was shot in a fictional location: the occupied catwalk. Employing all the elements of a fashion show, models reveal their abdomens in outfits designed especially to suit Israeli...
Ninha / Nous
(Danielle Arbid, 2005)
"My father was dying. I shot him to keep some evidence. I was afraid to lose everything I thought about him, all my anger against him, all my memories."-Danielle Arbid...
Mapping Journey #5
(Bouchra Khalili, 2010)
Part of Khalili's Mapping Journey Project. Khalili travelled to Marseilles, Ramallah, Bari, Rome, Barcelona and Istanbul– the arteries of trafficking and trade. She walked around each city with maps and a fistful...