Sight Unseen presents
“Arab Experimental Films: Reflections on Situated Time”
Curated by Samirah Alkassim

May 30th 2015
The Red Room at Normals Books & Records
425 E. 31st St.
Baltimore, MD 21218
8PM
FREE

PROGRAM NARRATIVE
This screening is comprised of five recent short films that provide a sampling from among the contemporary experimental film scene of the Middle East. From references that are more recognizable to an American audience, like the style of film noir, to more specific signifiers tied to geographic location and cultural histories, each film casts a reflection on the historical circumstances from which it was produced that are also global in their resonance. On the Road (be fekret hastam) frames a soul’s longing to encounter its other through eight windows playing simultaneously; Deep Sleep, shot under self-hypnosis, “takes us on a journey through the sound waves of Gaza to travel between different sights of modern ruin” (Al-Sharif) ; Rice City uses the conventions of film noir to portray an ambiance of psycho-social stasis in Egypt preceding the revolution of 2011; Transparent Evil frames the eeriness of empty spaces outside Tahrir Square during the 2011 Egyptian revolution; and Incarnation of a Bird from an Oil Painting fuses an obscure 20th century snippet of Lebanese intellectual history with an homage to surrealist cinema. The cultural locations are Abu Dhabi, Cyprus, Cairo, Gaza, Beirut, but the cultural references are global, via a mixture of overlapping locations, superimposed elements, and stylistic techniques, invoking the materiality of film, video and photography. Such works and many more of their kind engage us with the fertile creative work of today’s experimental filmmakers from an oft-portrayed (in many cases justifiably) beleaguered region.
-Samirah Alkassim

PROGRAM
On the Road (be fekret hastam) by Naz Shahrokh (United Arab Emirates, 2013, 6:40)
Deep Sleep, by Basma Al-Sharif (Jordan/US, 2014, 12:45)
Rice City, by Sherif El-Azma (Egypt, 2010, 19:45)
Transparent Evil, by Roy Samaha (Lebanon, 2011, 26:00)
Incarnation of a Bird from an Oil Painting, by Omar Fakhoury & Roy Samaha (Lebanon, 2014, 8:00)

Filmmakers’ biographies can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/events/428629103974953/

***We will be accepting donations at the door which will go towards supporting New Lens, a a youth driven social justice organization in Baltimore, working to assist youth in making art and media about often-underrepresented perspectives.
More Info: http://www.newlens.info/