The police phoned. They left a message on the machine. They said he was dead. The video unwinds through stories of sex for rent, unclaimed bodies, cigarette burns, and other monuments of life’s long run from wall to wall. Cut the Parrot is three grotesque comedies in one: the stories of Gerry, Susan, and Albert. Songs of hope and heartbreak spill from the mouths of the performers. The order of impersonation rules.

“Do not be sad, my son, you are destined to fall in love.” An intervention-reading of a concert by Egyptian musician Abdelhalim el Hafiz, performing The Fortune Teller by the poet Nizar Qabbani. "My son you are 10 years old, I look at the life you have ahead of you and today it gives me vertigo. But it is not fair, perhaps because I am seeing it from my decline, I no longer have the drive that is becoming strong in you now, that is growing every day; this whirlwind of dust, but also of beauty that will take your life, like ours, like a leaf in the wind. Perhaps it was you and Yasmin who recently crossed the dense city sky... I remember as if it were yesterday in the wastelands, you picked up a translucent stone that shone in the sun when you showed it to me and now I know that you are that star you were holding in your hands".

We follow the director's camera into the kitchens and living rooms of a community of Moroccan women. inside the walls of their apartment in Casablanca's old Medina, the women cook, clean, take care of their families and help each other. With their hands in the dough, in the soap whilst washing the laundry, doing the house chores, in the market or at the hammam, between laughter and tears ("We are housewives, that's all. ... Our sport? House cleaning!"). These courageous women, proud of their role, talk about their miserable lives with a great sense of awareness, but without self-pity. They show a surprising vitality, curiosity for life and solidarity. These house-proud housewives may not all know how to read, but they know exactly what would improve their lives: equal rights for women and men, more money, and a better future for their children so they wouldn't have to emigrate to support the family. A sense of hope and the possibility of change radiate out of the everyday lives of these heroines ("batalett").

Observatory Archives 1999

/ CONTEXT 1994 - 2020

Observatory Archives 1999

The theme of OVNI 1999 is the journey that goes from the social to the private and vice versa, with the understanding that they are part of the same continuous fabric. Memory/Collective Fiction. Dreams/Personal Memories. Standards and archetypes and individual irreducibility. Media paranoia and stories of schizophrenia. Social passions and love stories. The “American dream”, the “European dream”. Temporary Autonomous Zones and Other Worlds.

Thematical screenings

Hall and Auditorium.  Simultaneous Screenings

Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona

Montalegre 5. 08001 Barcelona

"Being photographed is the only way to cheat death? I remember the camera we use when we fucked for the first time. You said this way our love will never end. But now I never see you, only on TV. " OVNI 2000 Community 6th Independent Vídeo & Interactive Phenomena Show

Unrelated men and women tell their love stories.

A exploration of sexuality among gay men in Lebanon. Five characters talk about their sexuality, about commitments, about their relationship to their bodies, about their passions and love in a society where homosexuality is still punished with imprisonment. The video uses light to produce a white veil, rendering almost impossible character identification.

An exploration of human sentiments, but also a questioning of the reality of these feelings once they are filtered through the media. 6th Independent Vídeo & Interactive Phenomena Show