Response #2
e-flux and the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen are pleased to present Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige’s A Letter to Marguerite (2020), the second response in the joint series From My Window / From Your Window.
Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, A Letter to Marguerite, 2020
France, 3:45 minutes
Paris, May 8, 2020. Two days before the end of the lockdown in France. We try to follow the path filmed by Marguerite Duras in Les mains négatives years ago. We are deprived of movement, of unexpected encounters, of freedom, of cinema… “You who have a name, who have been given an identity, I love you with an indefinite love,” said she.
Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige are filmmakers and artists, born in Lebanon. Together, they have directed award-winning films that have gained wide international distribution. Their artwork has been shown extensively in solo and group exhibitions in museums, biennials, and art centers around the world. They received the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2017.
About the series
Organized by e-flux and the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, this joint screening series is inspired by a film by Józef Robakowski titled Z mojego okna (From My Window), made in Łodż, Poland over a 20-year period from 1978 to 1999, as part of a project that Robakowski called My Very Own Cinema: “what I work on when nothing is working out.”
The series will present a short film every week—all of them freely available online—starting May 1, 2020 with Robakowski’s film. Alongside the films, we have asked artists and filmmakers to contribute a brief video-letter or video statement to this project: a small window into their current situation, and into how they are living through this moment. It is our hope that this collective record of the present will help us imagine a future that we want to live in. The first of these responses was Emily Jacir’s 24 marzo (dalla mia finestra), with new responses presented every other week.
The International Short Film Festival Oberhausen is the oldest and most prestigious festival of its kind, founded in 1954.
e-flux is an online publishing platform and think tank, founded in 1999.
For more information contact program@e-flux.com.
