Middle East

Curated by Lebanese video artist Akram Zaatari, and originally presented by the Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Radical Closure features works produced in response to situations of physical or ideological closure resulting from war and territorial conflicts. The program looks at what is known as the Middle East, and how the moving image has functioned throughout its history, charged with division, political tension, and mobilization.

Rabih Mroueh

Face A/Face B

Artist Rabih Mroué looks back at old audio recordings, which were made by him and his parents to be sent as audio letters to his brother while he studied abroad. The old recordings become the site of a political critique of the packaged values of communism, resistance and martyrdom.

This title is only available on Radical Closure.

Elia Suleiman

Homage by Assassination

A Palestinian filmmaker is writing a script in his New York apartment during the first Gulf war. As much as he tries to shut himself off from the exterior world, images of past wars in the Middle East come back to haunt him.

This title is only available on Radical Closure.

Mahmoud Hojeij

we will win

The filmmaker and his friend, both Lebanese, meet two Israelis their own age in Paris, and spend some playful time with them. While they play a game, they refer constantly and humorously to the war and to the frozen status quo between the two countries.

This title is only available on Radical Closure.

Marwa Arsanios

I've Heard Stories 1

This short animation explores various ways to narrate an incident that once took place in the mythical Hotel Carlton. Against images of the deserted hotel today, the artist sketches situations that evoke the rumors that once circulated around the place and the people who inhabited it.

This title is only available on Radical Closure.

Sharif Waked

Chic Point: Fashion for Israeli Checkpoints

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 checkpoints. For Israelis in the present time, the individual Palestinian body is the most dangerous weapon there is, and it is therefore the subject of ongoing and humiliating surveillance.

This title is only available on Radical Closure.

Avi Mograbi

Detail

Detail is indeed a detail. It is an excerpt from Mograbi’s feature film Avenge But One of My Two Eyes, where human conditions face military situations. This is a detail of the reality as lived by Palestinians and Israelis daily in Israel and the Occupied Territories. This “detail” is what makes life unbearable.

This title is only available on Radical Closure.

Ghassan Salhab

(Posthume) (Posthumous)

Following on from the 2006 Israeli aggression on Lebanon, the filmmaker tries to film the destruction of Beirut. We witness a city deserted by life, and ghostly characters who, featured in his earlier films, talk about living through such a war.

This title is only available on Radical Closure.

Samir

(It Was) Just a Job

Right after the first Iraq war, the filmmaker visits his family in Iraq. He tries to reconstruct the war from different points of view, all depicted on the same screen at the same time: U.S. airplanes dropping bombs, his parents fixated on the television, and the family welcoming him back.

This title is only available on Radical Closure.

Olga Nakkas, Hassan Zbib

Mon ami Imad et le taxi (My Friend Imad and the Taxi)

In 1985, Hassan Zbib and Olga Nakkas separately started to develop film scenarios based on simple narratives, and would shoot them on Super 8, which was still possible to develop in Beirut at the time. Their work featured the city as a stage where lonely characters drifted: a taxi driver in his car, a man walking around, talking to a Rambo poster.

Guy Ben-Ner

House Hold

This work is almost a parable, where a man is imprisoned under his baby’s bed. He tries all means to survive and to find a mechanical solution that would lead him to freedom.

This title is only available on Radical Closure.

Namir Abdel Messeh

Toi Waguih (You, Waguih)

This film is the result of an intimate time spent between the filmmaker, who lives today in Belgium, and his father who is a former political prisoner. It looks at the complex political system of Egypt under Nasser.

This title is only available on Radical Closure.

Paul Chan

Tin Drum Trilogy

Paul Chan's Tin Drum Trilogy includes the highly acclaimed single channel videos RE:_THE OPERATION (2002, 27:30, U.S., color, sound), BAGHDAD IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER (2003, 51:00, U.S., color, sound), and Now promise now threat (2005, 33:00, U.S., color, sound).

In addition, this new DVD box set includes audio commentary by Paul Chan and VDB Director Abina Manning. An accompanying monograph includes title descriptions, artist's biography and newly commissioned contextualizing essays by Dierdre Boyle and Yates Mckee.

Paul Chan

RE:THE_OPERATION

Based on a set of drawings that depict George W. Bush's administration as wounded soldiers in the war against terrorism, RE:THE_OPERATION explores the sexual and philosophical dynamics of war through the lives of the members as they physically engage each other and the "enemy". Letters, notes, and digital snapshots "produced" by the members on their tour of duty become the basis of video portraits that articulate the neuroses and obsessions compelling them toward an infinite war.

Paul Chan

Now promise now threat

“Now too late, he understood her. The heart that pumped out love, the mouth that spoke the Word, didn’t count.”

--Toni Morrison, “Beloved”

Middle East

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