From April 3 to 5, 2012 at Villa Arson – Nice
-PROGRAM:
Tuesday, April 3: Study day “War Indices/Modernity of Cinema,” open to all
6:00 PM: Lecture-performance “Aïda Save Me” by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige
Confronting the visible and the invisible, facts and narrative, logic and chance, the text questions the processes at work in any image construction of a reality that eludes us. At the time of the release in Lebanon of their new film A Perfect Day, the filmmakers discover that their fiction has taken on the appearance of a document.
8:30 PM: Program of short films by J. Hadjithomas and K. Joreige, with the filmmakers present
The Lost Film / The film al Mafkoud by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige (Lebanon/France, 2003, 42 min, subtitled in French)
The copy of our first feature film Around the Pink House disappeared in Yemen, on the day of the tenth anniversary of the reunification of the South and North of the country. A year later, we set out in search of the lost film. An investigation between Sana’a and Aden, a personal research around the image and our status as filmmakers in this part of the world. Khalil Joreige, Joana Hadjithomas
Ashes / Ramad by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige (Lebanon/France, 2003, 26 min, subtitled in French)
Nabil returns to Beirut after the death of his father, who died and was cremated in France, to fulfill his last wish: to scatter his ashes in the sea, beside the big rock of the Raouché. He is then confronted with his family’s refusal, who wants to bury, according to rites and customs, a body that no longer exists…
Wednesday, April 4
8:30 PM: Screening hosted by Philippe Azoury, with the filmmakers present
Khiam 2000-2007 by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige (Lebanon, 2007, 1h44, subtitled in French)
Georges de Beauregard Prize at the Marseille International Documentary Festival 2008
Created in 1985 in the security zone occupied by Israel since 1978 and administered by its proxy militia, the South Lebanon Army, Khiam was a lawless place where arbitrariness, torture, humiliation, and deprivation reigned. Sonia, Afif, Soha, Rajaé, Kifah, Neeman spent ten years in this hell. They testify about daily life in the camp and how they found the strength to exist in this concentration camp universe.
“Released in May 2000, the camp is transformed into a museum, then, during the July 2006 war, entirely destroyed under bombardments. It is now being considered to rebuild it identically. Eight years after the first filming, the filmmakers meet the six detainees again. This time they discuss with them the liberation, then the destruction of the camp, and finally its reconstruction. Memory, History, commemoration, and the power of image are the keys to this two-part film.” Jean-Pierre Rehm
Thursday, April 5
6:00 PM: Program of Lebanese short films and videos presented by Philippe Azoury
No One’s Rose by Ghassan Salhab (Lebanon, 2000, 12 min)
The film travels along a street in Beirut full of history, fiction, but also like any other street, in touch with reality. An automobile in which a man and a woman off-frame dialogue through the street’s noises.
(Posthumous) by Ghassan Salhab (Lebanon, 2007, 28 min)
Completed shortly after the Israeli aggression in the summer of 2006, a work doubly haunted by the present absence of any fiction and the omnipresence of reality.
The Candidate by Akram Zaatari (Lebanon, 1995, 10 min)
“It is a critique of the promotion of politicians on television. A candidate running for presidency talks about his program in general and light discourse on issues such as resistance and education.” Heure exquise
Lebanon/War by Rania Stephan (Lebanon, 2006, 47 min)
“Filmed in July and August 2006, this film is a succession of street scenes and portraits showing the inhabitants of Beirut trying to live despite the bombings… The urgency of filming and its conditions define the contours of a country at war.” Festival Paris Cinéma
8:00 PM: Screenings presented by Philippe Azoury
A Perfect Day by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige (Lebanon/France/Germany, 2006, 1h26, subtitled in French)
Twenty-four hours in the life of Malek, a young Beiruti suffering from sleep apnea syndrome. That day, he convinces his mother, with whom he lives, to visit a lawyer to officially declare his father dead, who disappeared fifteen years earlier, and decides also to search for Zeina, the woman he loves but who refuses to see him again. What if today was “the perfect day” to escape from his ghosts and find those he has lost?
I Want to See by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige (France/Lebanon, 2008, 1h15, subtitled in French)
“July 2006. A war breaks out in Lebanon. A new war but not just another one, a war that breaks the hope for peace and the momentum of our generation. We no longer know what to write, what stories to tell, what images to show. We ask ourselves: ‘What can cinema do?’”
The guests:
Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige. This film couple has been constructing, since the 1990s, a body of work, between fiction and documentary, around the conflicts that have marked Lebanon’s contemporary history. The confrontation of the visible and the invisible, facts and narrative, logic and chance, their cinema questions the processes at work in any image construction of an elusive reality.
Philippe Azoury. Film critic for Libération, regular contributor to Les Inrockuptibles and Cahiers du Cinéma. He also co-founded a blog dedicated to books (Discipline in Disorder) and writes regularly about electronic music (Alainfinkiel-kraustrock). He has published several works on cinema: Fantômas…, Jean Cocteau and the cinema… and A. Werner Schroeter… He is currently a reporter for the Nouvel Observateur.
Jean-Yves Jouannais. For almost three years, Jean-Yves Jouannais has embarked at the Centre Pompidou on the construction from A to Z of an Encyclopedia of Wars, spanning from the origins to 1945. Close to performance, each entry is commented in real-time, critiqued, rewritten, and throughout the reading, all types of illustrations are projected: maps, photographs, paintings, film excerpts, newsreel, animated cartoons, artist videos, etc.
