calendario eventi  :: 

X

4/10/2011

Mapping Subjectivity

The Museum of Modern Art - MoMA, New York

The Museum of Modern Art and ArteEast present the second annual installment of Mapping Subjectivity: Experimentation in Arab Cinema from the 1960s to Now, Part II, running October 5–23, 2011, in The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters. The three-year film series aims to map a largely unknown heritage of personal, artistic, and sometimes experimental cinema from the Arab world. The works selected for the second edition of Mapping Subjectivity hail from Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia, Qatar, and the UAE, and they reflect a diversity and richness of voices and of imaginative visual languages.

Mapping Subjectivity is co-organized by The Museum of Modern Art and ArteEast, and is curated by Jytte Jensen, Curator, Department of Film, MoMA, and Rasha Salti, Senior Director, ArteEast. Presented in association with the Abu Dhabi Film Festival.

Mohamed Lakhdar-Hamina’s Palme d’Or award-winning Waqai’ Sanawat al-Jamr (Chronicle of the Years of Embers) (1975), an epic of sons and daughters forging their destiny and struggling for liberation from colonial rule, opens the festival on October 5, with Lakhdar-Hamina in attendance to introduce a new edit of the film having its international premiere on this occasion. Other notable highlights in the festival include Ghassan Salhab’s experimental film- noir—having just played to acclaim at The Toronto International Film Festival—Al Jabal (The Mountain) (2010), which follows a middle-aged man as he seeks isolation in a hotel room in the mountains; Ammar Bouras’s Tablod’bord (Dashboard) (2006), an intimate collaboration between visual artist Bouras and journalist and author Adlène Meddi, poetically narrating images recorded through a camera fixed on the dashboard; and Rania Attieh and Daniel Garcia’s Tayyeb, Khalas, Yalla (Okay, Enough, Goodbye) (2011), a caustic coming-of-age story about a man approaching 40 who lives with his elderly mother and uses her complete dependence as an excuse for avoiding making a life for himself, until her sudden departure to Beirut.

From the 1960s onward, filmmakers and artists have used existing footage—whether found or borrowed from television, cinema, public or personal archives—to create montages and forge visual narratives that are profoundly daring, innovative, and subjective. A number of films in Part II of Mapping Subjectivity achieve this through personal histories constructed in the first- person singular, including Akram Zaatari’s Al-Yaom (This Day) (2003), a voyage through geography and memory based on the circulation of images in the Arab world; Yto Barrada’s Hand- Me-Downs (2011), the artist’s exploration into her family history, recounting 16 myths based on unreliable narrators and unverifiable stories; Ahmad Ghossein’s Abi Ma Zal Shuyu’iyyan Asrar Hamimah Lil Jamee’ (My Father Is Still a Communist) (2011), with invented stories about his father being a war hero with the Communist party in Lebanon, inspired by audio letters sent by his father over 10 years; Ali Essafi’s Al-Hareb (Wanted) (2011), an imagined account of the life of Aziz, a 23-year old activist in Morocco told through archival footage; and Hakim Belabbes’s Ashlaa (In Pieces) (2009), an unflinchingly intimate chronicle of the filmmaker’s family in Morocco, made from footage collected over more than a decade. Azzeddine Meddour’s Combien je vous aime (How Much I Love You) (1985) tells the “other” story of liberation from colonialism by allegorically turning colonial archives upside down.

Audiovisual archives are a repository and chronicle of memories and lived moments; as such, they are as much a part of the fabric of collective imagination as cinema. Rania Stephan boldly explores this idea in her film Ikhtifa’aat Soad Hosni el-Thalaathat (The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni) (2011), a rapturous homage to a rich and versatile era of film production in Egypt, constructed from the work of one of its most revered stars, Soad Hosni. Néjib Belkadhi’s VHS Kahloucha (2006) tells the story of an ordinary man’s appropriation of film classics, while Ali Essafi’s Ouarzazate, the Movie (2001) uncovers the alternate reality of film production on location. Mohamed Soueid’s Tango el-Amal (Tango of Yearning) (1998) is a cinephile’s poetic elegy to film stars and Beirut’s movie theaters, pieced together from memories and traces of a city undergoing a radical transformation.

Another film by Soueid, Ma Hataftu li Ghayriha (My Heart Beats Only for Her) (2008), blends fiction and nonfiction to tell a singular story about a father and son and their reveries of glory. Tales of sons with dreams for a better life—building their destinies and enduring a rupture between generations—inspired a number of films in the series, such as Ahmed el-Maânouni’s Alyam! Alyam! (Oh the Days!) (1978), the story of a young peasant whose dreams of a prosperous future lead him to apply for immigration to France; Oussama Mohammad’s Nujum an- Nahar (Stars in Broad Daylight) (1988), a tale of a double wedding, where one bride runs off in the middle of her wedding and the other refuses to get married; and Yousry Nasrallah’s El Madina (The City) (1999), set in the vibrant quarter of Cairo, the film follows Ali, an aspiring actor who heads to Paris, where the only work he can get is boxing in rigged fights.

Mapping Subjectivity will also include two discussion-based programs. On Thursday, October 13, the panel, Archives, Appropriation, and Montage: Rewriting History and the Personal in Arab Film, features filmmakers, artists, and scholars who will discuss representations of recent history in contemporary Arab cinema. On Monday, October 17, MoMA’s Modern Mondays, a weekly program which brings contemporary, innovative film and moving-image works to the public and provides a forum for viewers to engage in dialogue and debate with contemporary filmmakers and artists, will feature filmmaker Mohamed Soueid.

The exhibition is made possible by The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art.

Image: This Day. 2003. Lebanon. Directed by Akram Zaatari. Courtesy of the filmmaker.

Press Contact: Sarah Jarvis, 212-708-9757, sarah_jarvis@moma.org
Margaret Doyle, 212-408-6400, Margaret_doyle@moma.org

The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53 Street, New York, NY 10019
Hours: Wednesday through Monday: 10:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m. Friday: 10:30 a.m.–8:00 p.m. Closed Tuesdays.
Films are screened Wednesday-Monday at The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters
$12 adults; $10 seniors, 65 years and over with I.D. $8 full-time students with current I.D. (for admittance to film programs only.) The price of a film ticket may be applied toward the price of a Museum admission ticket when a film ticket stub is presented at the Lobby Information Desk within 30 days of the date on the stub (does not apply during Target Free Friday Nights, 4:00–8:00 p.m.).

stampa

permanent link