Resistance(s): Experimental Films from the Middle East and North Africa

August 12, 2010 | 6.00 pm
Little Theatre, National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai

This DVD compilation, Resistance[s], includes eight films and videos from Middle Eastern and North African artists. It’s a panorama of contemporary experimental creativity from this region of the world. As international travellers, these filmmakers have forged their identities with the different cultures that they have encountered through periods of migration and exile. Using images to lead the narrative, each artist succeeds in raising fundamental questions relating to humanity, politics, and aesthetics.

The richness and diversity of the films presented on this DVD are a testament to the Arab world’s important contribution to contemporary art and cinema. These films are not in themselves a form of resistance against a particular system but are rather manifestations of resistance through thinking and filmmaking, images, and sounds. They are not about negative and reactive resistance in the context of troubling times, nor are they representing militant resistance looking to emancipation. These are not political films but ways of politically creating films, to resist through art in a positive way.

Dansons, Zoulikha Bouabdellah (Algeria/France) I Transit, Taysir Batniji (Palestine/France) I Dieu me pardonne, Mounir Fatmi (Morocco/France) I Wet Tiles, Lamya Gargash (UAE) I Allahu Akbar, Usama AIshaibi (lraq/USA) K3 (Les Femmes), Frederique Devaux (France/Algeria) I untitled part 3b: (as if) beauty never ends…, Joyce Salloum Lebanon/(Canada) I Ca sera beau. From Beyrouth with Love, Wael Noureddine (Lebanon/France)