Future-Past-Present: A Journey Through the Twenty-Tens So Far

O, Persecuted turns the act of restoring Kassem Hawal’s 1974 Palestinian Militant film Our Small Houses into a performance possible only through film. One that involves speed, bodies, and the movement of the past into a future that collides ideology with escapism.

"Basma Alsharif’s O, Persecuted confronts layers of history and ideology emanating from a recently restored 1974 Palestinian militant film. The grainy black-and-white images often appear hidden, barely glowing from beneath a thick, perhaps painted surface, which a performer methodically removes over the course of the film... There is an outburst of energy as the film shifts registers and shows a series of wildly energetic beach party images. Alsharif diagnoses a troubling uncertainty and disengagement in youth which slingshots from the past to the present day."

— James Hansen, Filmmaker Magazine

In a city post-apocalypse, young men communicate only through smart devices. They make home out of urban debris. They can’t speak to each other, but are still able to dream.

"Akraam Zaatari’s Beirut Exploded Views shatters the stillness of daily life. Tracking shots follow a number of young men toying with their mobile phones around construction sites. The final shot finds the camera taking on the perspective of a fighter jet, subjecting us to the ways in which disruption can occur without warning thanks to the current instability of the region."

— Tess Jaspers, Film Comment

This work was commissioned by the Gwangju Biennial 2014 and produced with the support of ACE-Saradar Group.

Director of Photography: Bassem Fayad

Editing: Ali E-Darsa 

1:1.85 letterboxed in 16:9

"Living on the slopes of the volcano Vesuvius is a strange contradiction: always in stress and yet also sleepy, waiting for what might happen. In close cooperation with the Osservatorio Vesuviano and several inhabitants of the 'Red Zone' of the volcano, Rosa Barba constructs a lyrical portrait of this area, which shelters Mafia members and illegal Chinese immigrants. Historic footage, measurements, maps, and aerial shots try to capture what is always uncertain."

— International Film Festival Rotterdam, 2010

Storyteller recomposes aerial shots from the Las Vegas casino skyline to create a slick, artificial world, reminiscent of science fiction. At first glance, the viewer might think of jewelry-like space ships floating slowly through the universe. When the camera zooms in on buildings and architecture, the detailed glitter and kitsch of the city hypnotically reveals something of pure beauty and madness. Using the relatively simple technique of the horizontal mirroring screen, Provost manoeuvers and influences the interpretation of images, carefully balancing between the figurative and the abstract.

At the heart of Alone With You is the notion of impassioned avarice, i.e. the kind of motivated acquisitiveness that drives both erotic desire and obsessive collecting.

Alone is built around two main characters, a hot young pro-wrestler – the maker’s object of desire – and Robert Mapplethorpe, the artist/collector par excellence, who serves as both alter-ego and nemesis for Ischar himself. But there are no neatly contained categories here, and elements slip constantly between the various qualities of compulsion/compassion being explored. Alone... is a densely ‘vertical’ work, its use of superimpositions and shifting frame sizes giving it an almost ‘anti-cinematic’ quality. The work is roughly divided into two parts with the second section re-shaping and re-employing elements from the first.

Welcome to David Wojnarowicz Week is the follow up to A Boy Needs a Friend. Reinke proposes a new holiday with the motto MORE RAGE LESS DISGUST: David Wojnarowicz Week and takes us through his seven days of celebration.

Plankton, Kafka, Bette Davis, Wednesday afternoon visits with friends, more plankton, burning villages, Hollis Frampton, Sammy Davis Jr. as a libidinal machine producing sadness, opera, disembowelment, and poetry.