Video Concerning the Arab World

TransArab Itinerant 2003-2005

2003 / 2005 / 2006 / 2009 - TransArab

Video Concerning the Arab World

This programme is not intended to provide an overview of independent video in Arab and Islamic countries, nor does it seek to be representative in any way.

The works being presented, like the programme as a whole, reflect the notion of “slices of reality”, in the sense that they are subjective visions, aware of their partiality, which do not exclude contradiction or conflict. Visions that perceive a strong tension on their surface and take up these eddies of confusion and violence as cause for  urgent reflection and knowledge.

Images and stories, realities in themselves, rhizomatic realities: interwoven without a centre or a fixed meaning. And for that very reason, instead of giving rise to cultural dualism based on opposition, they engender a web of underground connections.

A new episode of the author's personal video diary. Every day life seen through psychological problems. Available online until December 20th, 2020. Courtesy of Harvard Film Archive.

Al Barzaj [Between the worlds] is a poem about the halfway world, between the visible and the invisible, sleep and wakefulness... An inner journey through underground streets, secret gardens.

CRA’P in collaboration with the Archives OVNI – Observatory of Video Not Identified, presents a video program with a subsequent discussion about the intermediate world: between the visible and the invisible, sleep and wakefulness ...

“ Le Grand Jihad” by Vincent Moon, 9’ (France / Chechnya). No dialogue.

One of the most beautiful and significant practices of the great jihad is the ritual ceremony of dhikr (zikr). Arabic word that means memory ... an intimate reconnection - but within a collective ceremony - with the mystery of the Real ... that is, with the indefinable, un-representable, inappropriate ... beyond all measure, physical or rational.

“ Racines Lointaines“ by Pierre Yves Vanderweerd, 70’ (Mauritania / Belgium). VO. Arabic, French.

Subtitles in Spanish.

Travel through Mauritania in search of a tree. Throughout the journey, encounters with men and women who share their ways of seeing the world and life. For some, the tree is a sign from the invisible world, or a call from the light ... for others it is a tree only seen when you get lost.

“ Trance with the Green Man” by toni serra *) abu ali, 8’ (Morocco). No dialogue.

A search for Al-Jádir الخضر, the inner master. Al-Jádir, literally means the one who grows green, inhabits the intermediate world, the no man's land. The fine gap between the real and the unreal, life and death, sleep and wakefulness.

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  This whirling dance tape is a visual odyssey from Beirut to Berlin, a woman’s story set in the oppressive civil fragmentation of two divided cities where images of destruction and reconstruction are intermingled. A cutting edge poetic short, that maps out the roots of inner and outer landscapes. Biba Non Biba is a powerful visual and sonic plea for change that is inclusionary not exclusionary. ARGOS Centre for Art and Media / Biba non Biba  

A military helicopter circles in the sky like an evil wasp. Chaos on the ground after the attack. A fast-paced sequence - bleeding people, burning cars and confused soldiers. Subheading: From Beirut - with Love. A cinematic postcard-greeting, so bitter and cynical, it can only come from a city at war with itself. The only dialogue in the film reveals a surprising connotation: Beirut is Paris, or Madrid, or any other metropolis. The scene is set: youth without a future, bomb attacks, drugs, arms, soldiers. The postcard has arrived.

This controversial, startling and hypnotic mix of music and visuals is a semi-autobiographical psycho-drama following one addict's journey from sickness to health, anguish to well being. The Chappaqua filmscape is polulated with counter-cultural icons: Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, Jean Louis Barrault and Ornette Coleman...