Monday 02.04.08 -- Videos from Lebanon [Part 3] -- Nightfall / Mohammad Soueid

Curated by Christine Tohme

Contents:
1. About This Monday 02.04.08
2. About Nightfall
3. About Mohammad Soueid
4. possibly re-screening In This House / Akram Zaatari
5. to view part 1 and 2

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1. About This Monday 02.04.08

What: Screening
When: 7:30pm
Where: 16beaver, 4th Floor
Who: Free and Open to all

This is part 3 of 3 . But because of some confusion last week about the time and place of the screening, we may re-screen Akram’s video as well.

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2. About Nightfall

In 1975, a group of young Lebanese men joined the Palestinian organization "Fateh". Known as the "Student Brigade", they participated in the Lebanese Civil War. Some of them were killed, others left the country. Following the Israeli invasion in 1982, Palestinian armed forces left Lebanon. The "Student Brigade" disbanded and the young Lebanese fighters have now become old nursing their solitude with alcohol, poetry and songs.

[Video, 68 minutes, 2000, Arabic with English subtitles]

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3. Mohammad Soueid
Born in 1959, Beirut, Lebanon, Mohamed Soueid began his academic life very distant from the world of film and video. In 1977, he enrolled to study Chemistry at the Lebanese University. Yet, his passion for films took the best out of him. Where immediately after he completed his studies he began a career in film criticism where he wrote weekly columns for Al-Safir daily newspaper, as well as for the weekly cultural supplement (Al-Mulhak) of An-Nahar daily newspaper.

While continuing with his career in film criticism, he worked as an assistant director for a number of Lebanese filmmakers. After he directed his first film “Absence” in 1990, Mohamed Soueid went on to execute his own documentaries and TV works, where he was notably known by his autobiographical trilogy full-length documentaries “Tango of Yearning” (1998), “Nightfall” (2000) and “Civil War” (2002). His “Tango of Yearning” won the Best Documentary Director Prize at Beirut International Film Festival in Beirut 2000.

Apart from his documentary independent works, Mohamed Soueid directed the TV mini series drama “Women in Love”, a free remake of a classical work produced by Télé Liban in the 70s and then directed by Samir Nasri. Carmen Lobbos, Julia Kassar and Carole Abboud were among the leading cast of Soueid’s remake.

Since 2002, Mohamed Soueid has been assigned as senior producer for “O3 Productions”, the documentary sister company of the MBC satellite TV Group.

In addition to his film and TV work, Mohamed Soueid published two books on Lebanese cinema and old movie theatres: “Postponed Cinema – The Lebanese Civil War Films” (published by “Arab Research Foundation”, Beirut, 1986) and “ Ya Fouadi – A Chronicle of Beirut’s Late Movie Theatres” (published by “Dar An-Nahar”, Beirut, 1996).

In 2004, his first novel “Cabaret Souad” was released by the Lebanese publishing house Dar Al-Adab; and he is currently shooting his new feature length documentary “Written on the Dust”.

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4. re-screening In This House / Akram Zaatari

Following the Israeli withdrawal from Ain el Mir in 1985, the village became the frontline. The Dagher family was displaced from their home, which was occupied by a radical resistant group for seven years. When the war ended in 1991, Ali Hashisho, a member of the Lebanese resistance stationed in the Dagher family house, wrote a letter to the Dagher's family justifying his occupation of their house, and welcoming them back home. He placed the letter inside an empty case of a B-10, 82 mm mortar, and buried it in the garden. In November 2002, Akram Zaatari headed to Ain el Mir to excavate Ali's letter.
[Video, 30 minutes, 2005, Arabic with English subtitles]

Akram Zaatari is an artist who lives and works in Beirut. Author of more than 30 videos, and video installations, Zaatari has been exploring issues pertinent to Lebanese postwar condition, particularly the mediation of territorial conflicts and wars through television, and the logic of religious and national resistance such as in his documentary All is Well on the Border (1997), the circulation and production of images in the context of a geographical division of the Middle East, such as in his feature length This Day (2003) and In This House (2005). Zaatari has also been exploring representations of male sexuality particularly in Crazy of You (1997), and
later in How I love you (2001).
Co-founder of the Arab Image Foundation (Beirut), he based his work on collecting, studying, and archiving the photographic history of the Middle East notably studying the work of Lebanese photographer Hashem el Madani (1928-), as a register of social relationships and of photographic practices. His ongoing research was the basis for a series of exhibitions and publications such as "Hashem El Madani: Studio Practices" (with Lisa Lefeuvre) "Mapping Sitting" (collaboration with Walid Raad).
He has text contributions in scholarly journals such as Third Text, Bomb, Framework, Transition, and Parachute. He is a regular contributor, writing on video, in Zawaya.

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5. to view part 1 and 2

please go to…
http://www.16beavergroup.org/monday/archives/002451.php#more
http://www.16beavergroup.org/monday/archives/002442.php#more