London Palestine Film Festival 2013

The London Palestine Film Festival opens Friday, May 3 at the Barbican Center running till May 15 at the University of London.

London 2013 Trailer from Palestine Film Foundation on Vimeo.

I have some highlights of my own that I cannot wait to see again in the cinema:

Shorts Session at the Barbican including:
ASketch of Manners (Alfred Roch's Last Masquerade) Jumana Manna, 2012
Tunnel, Mariam Kashkoolinia, 2012
Roubama, Rakan Mayasi, 2012
Maqloubeh, Nicolas Damuni, 2012
Though I Know the River is Dry, Omar Robert Hamilton, 2013

Each of these films demonstrates a high quality of creative storytelling and production value.  The dark, wry humour of Maqloubeh presents unexpected twists and turns within the short ten minutes, the beautiful masquerade of A Sketch of Manners lends to its mysterious outlook based on a single photograph and the tension of one man's reality between his political past and the open future of his family in Though I Know the River is Dry.  Each film is unique in tone and narrative, together they present a new crop of filmmakers reflecting on the real and surreal through their cinematic imagination.

The Gulf War... What Next?

portmanteau, 1991

Very interesting to me personally as someone who remembers the Gulf War so well.  These five films, from Tunisia, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco and Palestine, reflect on the short war from experimental points of view ranging between the political to the humorous.  Directors anxious about their films, families discuss hypocrisies of religion and colonial histories and media are apathetic towards violence.  Besides Elia Suleiman's debut in his Homage by Assassination, the film is a shocking, assertive and explorative out-of-the-vault look back at the 1991 war.

The Anabasis of May and Fusaku Shigenobu, Masao Adachi and 27 Years Without Images 

Eric Baudelaire, 2011

What is activism without images? What is history without archive? And within the internationalist movement of Palestine's Film Unit, how did cinema connect them to the Japanese Red Army?  Vague histories, individuals with shifted identities, imprisoned radicals are remembered with images attempted to be recreated: The Anabasis questions the links between image, ideology, politics and history.

Testimony

Shlomi Elkabetz, 2011

Testimony is an intense piece of cinema: popular Israeli actors collectedly recount horrifying testimonies by Palestinians subjected to the violence by Israeli perpetrators.  Memories of beatings, shooting, sexual assaults are retold in Hebrew with actors standing against pastoral landscapes.  The film is a powerful look at the influence of language and the affect of performance.

Jean We Jnoon

Mamdooh Afdile, 1999

Funny, silly and realistically unreal: Mamdooh Afdile "casts" his own family in this humorous look at this own failure at making his film, a science fiction horror.  As an out-of-work director, his family of doctors attempt to persuade him to use his mixed talents at the supernatural and filmmaking to venture into other lucrative businesses like wedding video production and horror-funhouse managing.  But not everyone agrees with all the ideas...

Of course there is a lot more, check them out, see you there!

Aesthetic of Disempowerment, in The State

Yes, Volume IV of The State, dedicated to Dubai, is now on the shelves.

My essay, entitled Aesthetics of Disempowerment, on imaging migrant workers in the Gulf, is included within these golden pages.

to purchase this issue, click this

Manama snaps 2013

Manama Suq

Packaging

Remnants of the Gulf War, Bahrain.  

T-shirt found, not bought, at the Manama Suq.  I remember a few disturbing T-shirts being sold at the Yateem Center in the 90's.  This is a tame one, but it still left a bad taste.  There is a cockiness to the fact that the War was turned into this cliche sloganed T-shirt.

Lailat AlQadar night at the Pakistan Club. 

Its funny because in Arabic, written phonetically, club is كلب - which can also be read as 'dog'. 

bahraini cubism - where's the info?

I am realizing how little there is on-line and publicly about Bahrain's modernist art works/artists.  Coincidentally in two 'private(-ish)' places, my aunt's house and a doctor's office, I ran into a few examples of Bahraini realist cubist paintings.  More on the expressionist side than the surreal, all of these combine traditional scenes with angular fragmentations.

Whether or not people beleive these are relevant to an "original" Bahraini art development, influences - particularly ones that were presented so widely - perhaps shouldn't be ignored.  Though these may be exercises in technique, rather than expression, they did at some level occupy a certain landscape of locally produced artwork.  

These are not signed, but they are believed to be by Abdallah Al Muharaqqi, one of Bahrain's most well known painters.  Al Muharraqqi was also a graphic designer having created commercial logos and designed stamps.  He was very prolific as a painter and produced many many works of all different styles.  Clearly he was inspired by the great masters of the 20th century, creating his own local definitions of movements he was interested in.

There is even less about the artist of this painting, a sort of blade runner of veiled women profiles.  Artist Aziz Zuberi is listed in the Bahrain Art Society, but his name isn't even hyperlinked to any information or a further gallery.  

further reading:

An interview with Abdallah Al Muharaqqi

Hanaa Malallah - aesthetic of ruin

“I am political due to being Iraqi.  I am a political artist by destiny, not by choice.  And accidentally, I survived.

“Another free lesson from war, is that death has no meaning and anything solid can go to ruins in no time,” she explains, “things vanish from the figurative to the abstract.”  

Hanaa Malallah experienced many wars throughout her life, starting with the Iran/Iraq war, followed by the invasion of Kuwait in 1991, and then the invasion of Iraq by Americans in 2003.  “To taste the war physically is completely different from seeing it.” 

She looks at Iraq as a place of 'ruin': it came from 'ruin', "Mesopotamia is the utopia of ruin", she says; her artwork uses found objects that she collects from the current ruin of Iraq.  She sees the use of found materials as inherently political because of the history attached to each object.

Malallah explains the influence of 'ruin' on her work and cultural outlook:

“After the first Gulf war and during the sanction period, the Iraqi artists of the 1980’s – I being one of them – were concerned with their ancient heritage, this was triggered by an acute awareness of the need to discover an individual identity in the aftermath of war and sanction and ban on travel for any reason.  A vital focal point of our 80’s generation was the archeological museum.  This contains important artifacts for 6,000 years of Mesopotamian history.  One can say that the Iraqi artist has viewed the objects and artifacts as modern artwork and have taken in this material the sensibility of the ruins as aesthetic in their (and my) technique.  In 1991, during the Gulf War, this museum was closed out of fear of further US air strikes and it wasn’t reopened until 28 April 2000.  It was looted and destroyed in 2003 during the US occupation.  As for that, one may view the museum as a composite or assemblage of ruins: historical artifacts and destruction of war and looting.  One must remember that the areas surrounding the museum was extensively bombed and destroyed, so wherever Iraqis turned to look, whether in the museums or outside, there was remains of ruins.”

- Hanaa Malallah, interviewed by me at Mosaic Rooms, 2011

detail. photo by Fatem Abudress

Nadim Karam - making cities dream

Nadim Karam's figures, atop Waterstones at Notting Hill Gate

"The main thing behind my projects is to make cities dream.  Cities struggle on a number of levels, so if you can inject a moment of dreaming in them, its creates an impact. I create stories represented by elements or figures in a context that I plan with the help of the citizens.  I just place them there then suddenly, together with the citizens, they create a kind of exchange about the city.  Because the works can only be seen from certain points, the citizens passing by creates a sort of interaction of things." - Nadim Karam, architect and artist, interview with me, at Ayyam Gallery, London

Nadim Karam's elephant at Notting Hill Gate

Halim AlKarim - "resisting harsh realities"

"My work is my way of resisting harm and harsh reality.  I try, in this show, to compile different works from different times to give a complete image of how people find ways to resist harsh realities.  Through all my work I try to keep my heart alive, to surround myself with love, because I believe that this is the only way I can keep myself from violence.  Also, this is a way to contain my personal life, to contain the beasts and monsters inside me.  Some people consider what I do noble, others consider me a dirty old man.  With these two ways of living and making art I protect myself from harsh realities; I don’t want to be affected by it.  I want to be nice and not behave in a rough way with people around me." - Halim Al Karim, interview with me at ArtSpace, January 2013

by Halim Al Karim
Eternal Love I, 2010

full text will appear in Asharq AlAwsat

eastern riches in the UK

this morning I was thinking that London is like a "best of the third world" collection in one city that is the jewel on the empirical crown.  what makes this place great other than the great British customs and icons: Ceyloni tea time, Indian veggie masala, Egyptian Harrod's (well, just for argument's sake really) and, entering the modern edge, the Qatari Shard - Western Europe's tallest skyscraper.

Clearly i was thinking this sarcastically, as in tongue-in-cheek: I don't like the term 'third world'.

Found this image of a piece by Leila Pazooki by chance after thinking that joke to myself.

spotted and taken at the London Art Fair

an electric take on the more submissive 18th century ceiling piece at the British Library