Conversation, Screening

In a thoughtful, dreamlike montage, the Beirut-based video artist and New School graduate Akram Zaatari examines archival photos, from portraits of Bedouins in the desert to the bomb-rent sky over the Lebanese capital. The imagery moves from an idyllic rural past, when the central conflict was between camel and car, to the strife-ridden present of propaganda and urban alienation. From his perch at the editing station, where he assembles these layers of history, Zaatari wonders what truths are ultimately captured in these photographs. In Arabic and English with English subtitles.

Post-screening panel discussion with filmmaker Akram Zaatari and Walid Raad (Cooper Union/Vera List Center Fellow). Zaatari and Raad’s project Mapping Sitting: On Portraiture and Photography is concurrently on view at Grey Art Gallery, New York University.

Presented as part of the 2005 Season of Cinema East film series, ArteEast and the Department of Middle East Studies at New York University, in association with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, The New School.