Veranstaltungshinweis

Am 28.3. findet um 18.30 Uhr im Tanzquartier ein Filmscreening der libanesischen Künstlerin Lina Saneh statt. Freier Eintritt!

Film programme
Lina Saneh (LIB)
Motion-less
Curator: Lina Saneh; videos by: Maher Abi Samra, Ziad Antar, Khalil Joreige and Joanna
Hadjithomas, Walid Raad, Ghassan Salhab, Diana Allen and Sharif Waked.
The Lebanese director and performer Lina Saneh will curate a video programme, not about
dance, but on dance sensibility in a region which is still looking for a body to danse. In these
videos, through movement and the representation of movement an imaginary appears that,
through the charm of its fragile uncertainty, tell a lot about the moving peculiarities of a reality,
collides with it, lingers in it, ponders over it, get crestfallen from it, parodies it, poeticises,
politicises and attempts to divert it. An imaginary that endlessly constructs and deconstructs a
fluctuating and obscure reality: phantasmagoric and labyrinthine. A post-war reality, a pre-war
reality.
- films details :
Ghassan Salhab: La Rose de Personne (2000), 10 min., format 3:4
Sharif Waked: Chic point – Fashion for Israeli Checkpoints (2003), 7 min., format 3:4
Diana Allen: Still Live (2007), 25 min., format 3:4
Ziad Antar : Marche Turque (2006), 2 min. 20 sec., format 3:4 black and white
Maher Abi Samra : Merely a Smell (2007), 10 min., format 3:4 – black and white
Walid Raad : I Only Wish That I Could Weep (2001), 7 min., format 3:4 – no sound
Khalil Joreige and Joanna Hadjithomas : Lasting Images (2003), 3 min., format 3:4 – no
sound
Ghassan Salhab: La Rose de Personne (2000), 10 min. format 3:4
La Rose de Personne: Without stopping, and through an automobile windshield, La Rose de Personne runs
through Hamra street in Beirut. In the automobile, a woman and a man that remain practically off-screen. The words
they exchange reach us almost drowned out by a flood of sounds. It’s a kind of continuous flux, where sound and
image ceaselessly unfurl. The video is a discreet homage to the great poet Paul Celan.
Ghassan Salhab is born in Dakar, Senegal. In addition to making his own films, Salhab collaborates on various
scenarios in Lebanon and in France, and teaches film in Lebanon. He has directed three long films : Beyrouth
Fantôme (selected by Trois Continents/Nantes 1998 and various international film festivals), Terra Incognita
(selected by Sélection Officielle/« Un Certain Regard » – Cannes 2002, and also selected by several other
international film festivals), The Last Man (selected by « Cinéastes du Présent » – Locarno 2006, Montpellier, Torino,
Dubai, Singapore, Tribeca, “Tous les cinemas du monde” – Cannes 2007…), in addition to numerous short films and
videos, including (Posthume) ; Narcisse Perdu ; My living body, my dead body ; La Rose de personne ; Baalbeck (codirected
with A. Zaatari and M. Soueid) ; Afrique Fantôme; Après la Mort… He has also published his texts and
articles in various magazines.
Walid Raad: I Only Wish That I Could Weep (2001), 7 min., format 3:4 – no sound
I Only Wish That I Could Weep is a document attributed to Operator #17, a Lebanese Army intelligence officer
who was assigned to monitor the Corniche, a seaside boardwalk in Beirut. From 1997 on, the officer decided to
videotape the sunset instead of his assigned target. This videotape recounts the operator’s story and concentrates on
the footage he was permitted to keep after his dismissal.
Walid Raad is an artist and an Associate Professor of Art in The Cooper Union (New York, USA). Raad’s works include The
Atlas Group, a fifteen-year project between 1989 and 2004 about the contemporary history of Lebanon, and the ongoing
project titled Scratching on Things I Could Disavow: A History of Modern and Contemporary Art in the Arab World. His books
include The Truth Will Be Known When The Last Witness Is Dead, My Neck Is Thinner Than A Hair, and Let’s Be Honest, The
Weather Helped.
Raad’s works have been shown at Documenta 11 (Kassel, Germany), The Venice Biennale (Venice, Italy), The
Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin, Germany), The Museum of Modern Art (New York, USA), Homeworks (Beirut, Lebanon)
and numerous other museums and venues in Europe, the Middle East, and North America. Raad is also the recipient
of the Alpert Award in Visual Arts (2007), the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize (2007), and the Camera Austria
Award (2005).
Ziad Antar: Marche Turque (2006), 2 min. 20 sec. format 3:4 black and white
The Turkish March: A minimal video piece composed of one sequence video shot where we see a young woman
playing Mozart’s “Alla Turca” sonata while dampening the sounds.
Ziad Antar lives and works between Saida (Lebanon) and Paris (France). He graduated with a degree in agricultural
engineering in 2001, and has been working in photography and video since 2002. He completed a one-year
residency at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in 2003 and a one year residency at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Paris.
Videos include, Tokyo Tonight (2003), WA (2004), Tambourro (2004), Safe Sound (2006), Tank You (2006), Marche
Turque (2007), Mdardara (2007). He directed his first documentary in 2002 on the French photographer Jean-Luc
Moulène, titled Jean-Luc Moulène and has since made several documentaries for the Arabic news channel al-Arabiya,
including, L’Islam et la laïcité (2004), Lebanon and its Partners (2005), The Role of Europe (2007).
Maher Abi Samra: Merely a Smell (2007), 10 min. format 3:4 black and white
Merely a Smell: Summer 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon. A boat embarks on a besieged Beirut to evacuate foreign
nationals. From under the rubble of destroyed buildings, relief workers pull the bodies of the dead. Moving between
light and darkness, life and its extinction, bodies redraw the boundaries of other bodies, the smell of death cloaking
all.
Maher Abi Samra studied theatre at the Lebanese University, and majored in audiovisual studies at the Institut
National de l’Image et du Son in Paris. He worked as a photographer for Lebanese newspapers and for Agence
France Press and Reuters. He wrote and directed several documentaries, including Mariam (2006), Rond-Point
Chatila (2004), Women of Hezbollah (2000), and Building on the Waves (1995).
Diana Allen: Still Live (2007), 25 min. format 3:4
Still Life is the first sequence in a triptych of portraits that explores the mediations of memory among three
generations of Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon. It considers how a series of photos brought to Lebanon by Said
Otruk, an elderly Palestinian fisherman from Acre, mediate both his present experience and recollections of his life in
Palestine before 1948. Rather than being a straightforward expository narrative, or an act of witness of political
solidarity, the film is a meditation on the dislocations of memory; the loss of Palestine is lyrically convergent with the
felt loss of this vitality.
Diana Allan has a doctorate in social anthropology from Harvard University and is currently a junior fellow at the
society of fellows. She is founder of the Nakba Archive and the founding director of Lens on Lebanon, a participatory
film and photographic initiative established during the 2006 Lebanon-Israel war. Other video documentaries include:
Chatila, Beirut (2002), and Nakba Archive Excerpts (2007).
Sharif Waked: Chic point (2003), 7 min., format 3:4
Chic Point juxtaposes the fashion show with a series of documentary stills from checkpoints, placing the spectator in
a position that paraphrases the soldier’s gaze. The haute fashion line transfers the marking from the body to the
apparel, and to the ensuing playful possibilities inherent in the relationship between the clothes and those who are
wearing and removing them. The fast paced catwalk is the setting for denuding the loaded politics of the gaze and
the stark reality of imposed closures. Waked puts together two contradictory worlds in a powerful reflection on
aesthetics, the body, humiliation, surveillance, and freedom.
Sharif Waked was born in Nazareth to Palestinian refugees from the village of Mjedil. He studied at Haifa University
and lives and works in Haifa/Nazareth.
Through ironic reflections on power, politics, and aesthetics, Waked ponders the absurd realities of political conflict
by overturning established aesthetic formations and creating junctions between particular moments of
the present and visual references from the past.
Waked has exhibited at various biennials and museums in the Middle East, Europe and the U.S.A including:
(2008) Artists Space, New York; Huarte Centro de Arte Contempor—neo, Spain; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem;
(2007) Meeting Points 5, Berlin; The Nobel Peace Centre, Oslo; The Seconde Riwaq Biennale, Ramallah; Tate
Modern, London; (2006) Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris; (2005) The Oberhausen Short Film
Festival; Transmediale 05, International Media Art Festival, Berlin; (2004) Macro al Mattatoio, Museum of
Contemporary Art, Rome; Institute of Contemporary Arts, ICA, London; (2003) Witte de Witt Museum, Rotterdam;
Home Works II, Beirut; The 6th Sharjah International Biennial, UAE; (2002) Ars Electronica, Linz.
Khalil Joreige and Joanna Hadjithomas : Lasting Images (2003), 3 min., format 3:4 – no sound
On August 1985, during the civil war in Lebanon, Khalil’s uncle, Alfred Jr. Kettaneh, was kidnapped, and was never
found. Until now, he is still considered as “missing” as 17 OOO persons in Lebanon and the circumstances
surrounding his disappearance remain mysterious.
A few years ago, in 2001, we found in his archives a super 8 mm “latent” film, waiting to be sent to the laboratory.
The film remained in its yellow package for more than 15 years, surviving war and the fire that ransacked the house.
We hesitated a lot, but finally decided to send the film to the laboratory.
Once developed, the film proved to be fogged. A long series of white images. After working a lot on colour correction
and on the different layers of the film through the whiteness, images appeared.
Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, born in Beirut in 1969, work together as visual artists and filmmakers.
Their work includes feature films, documentaries, short films as well as photographic and video installations.
Their latest feature film Je Veux Voir (I wan’t to see) (2008) staring Catherine Deneuve and Rabih Mroué premiered
in the official selection of Cannes Film Festival before launching in various country and screening in numerous
festivals. Other films include A Perfect Day (2005) or short film as Ramad (Ashes). They also directed several
documentaries or essay as Khiam (2000), Al film al mafkoud (The lost film) (2003) and Khiam 2000-2007 (2008).
They have created numerous photographic installations and videos. Among them Lasting images, Distracted bullets,
The circle of confusion, War trophies or the multifaceted project Wonder Beirut, which includes such works as The
story of a Pyromaniac Photographer, Postcards of War and Latent Images.
Recent exhibitions include solo shows as We could be heroes just for one day at the Musée d’art Moderne de la ville
de Paris (2009), Where are we ? at the Festival d’Automne (2007), The circle of confusion at CRG Gallery (New York,
2007) ), Back to the present at Homeworks IV, Ashkal Alwan Forum, (Beirut, 2008), and Stories kept secret at the
Fort du Bruissin (2008) and participation in many group shows.
They both are the authors of differents publications.