February 16, 2022
Join us on e-flux Video & Film for the last day of the online film program Memories for Forgetfulness Elsewhere curated by Irmgard Emmelhainz.
The program, which launched on November 24, 2021, wraps with a repeat of all 23 films featured in Parts I through V—streaming one last time on Wednesday, February 16 through 17, 12pm EST.
Memories for Forgetfulness Elsewhere has featured films and video works by Nora Adwan, Reem Ali, Basma Alsharif, Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri, Selma Baccar, b.h. Yael, Fouad Elkoury, Harun Farocki, Shadi Habib Allah, Khadijeh Habashneh, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Helene Kazan, Hassan Khan, Dalia Al Kury, Wael Noureddine, The Otolith Group, Jocelyne Saab, Urok Shirhan, Mohanad Yaqubi, and Akram Zaatari; and discussions with Irmgard Emmelhainz, Khadijeh Habashneh, Olivier Hadouchi, Khaled Saghieh, Reem Shilleh, and Stefan Tarnowski.
Thank you for watching!
I. Postcards from Afar
Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Ismyrna, 2016, 50 minutes
Wael Noureddine, Ça sera beau (From Beyrouth with Love), 2005, 29 minutes
Jocelyne Saab, Imaginary Postcards, 2016, 6 minutes
Hassan Khan, Blind Ambition, 2012, 46 minutes
Basma Alsharif, Ouroboros, 2017, 77 minutes
II. Revolution and Civil War (Here)
Selma Baccar, Fatma 75, 1976, 61 minutes
Khadijeh Habashneh, Children Without Childhood, 1979-1980, 21 minutes
Jocelyne Saab, Children of War, 1976, 10 minutes
III. Images of Resistance from Elsewhere
Harun Farocki, War at a Distance, 2003, 58 minutes
The Otolith Group, Nervus Rerum, 2009, 32 minutes
Jocelyne Saab, One Dollar a Day, 2016, 6 minutes
b.h. Yael, Even in the Desert, 2006, 33 minutes
Mohanad Yaqubi, Off Frame AKA Revolution Until Victory, 2016, 62 minutes
IV. The Persistence of Resistance in the Actualization of Memories From the Past
Urok Shirhan, Watani Al Akbar (My Greater Homeland), 2015, 11 minutes
Wael Noureddine, A Film Far Beyond a God, 2008, 39 minutes
Fouad Elkoury, Atlantis, 2012, 13 minutes
Akram Zaatari, This Day, 2003, 86 minutes
Helene Kazan, Frame of Accountability: In Her View, 2022, 15 minutes
V. Today
Reem Ali, Zabad, 2008, 42 minutes
Dalia Al Kury, Syrialism, 2020, 21 minutes
Nora Adwan, Shifting Inheritance, 2020, 19 minutes
Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri, Black Bach Artsakh, 2021, 150 minutes
Shadi Habib Allah, Dag’aa, 2015, 18 minutes
Discussions
Contested Representations: Making Images from Elsewhere
With Irmgard Emmelhainz, Olivier Hadouchi, Khaled Saghieh, Stefan Tarnowski
Here and Elsewhere: Horizons of Resistance from Palestine
With Irmgard Emmelhainz, Khadijeh Habashneh, Reem Shilleh
About the program
This constellation of post-1967 films gathers a cultural memory of ongoing political conflicts rooted in the colonial past of a geographic area misnamed by relatively arbitrary boundary markers: the “Arab world,” “Orient,” or “Middle East.”
One of the traits of modernity is the experience of conflict elsewhere through visual interfaces. This is the result of the belief in the moral imperative to document, give testimony to, and disseminate images in order to stop atrocities happening far away, all while genocide, dispossession, and mass displacement are justified as collateral damage in the imperial wars seeking to expand neoliberal capitalism. To disentangle the complicated matrix of violence operating in the Middle East, the image has functioned as a pharmakon. Indeed, the birth of photography coincided with the expansion of early European imperialism in the Arab world, and some of the medium’s earliest outputs are Orientalist images taken by Europeans in places like Cairo and Jerusalem. Images have long shaped the external imagination of the region. One of the challenges cultural producers in the area face is to counter the image as an intervention in the field of vision that perpetuates imperial narratives, including that of the myth of journalistic objectivity.
Memories for Forgetfulness Elsewhere: Moving Images from the Middle East/Arab World After Empires is an online film program curated by Irmgard Emmelhainz for e-flux Video & Film, that streamed 23 films grouped into five thmeatic chapters from November 24, 2021 through February 16, 2022, and included two live discussions,
For more information, see the Memories for Forgetfulness Elsewhere program page, or contact program [at] e-flux.com.
