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My father is still a communist_courtesy of Ahmad Ghossein

FLUID STATES – FLUID MEDIA

Screening / Lecture: "The revolutionary" by Siska, artist, Beirut

Wednesday, March 11, 7pm, Auditorium Kunstmuseum Bonn

The entrance is free.

The years between the 1960s and 70s are often called, at least in hindsight, the ‘Golden Age’ of Lebanon. This is in no small part due to the success of Beirut’s commercial film industry.  After 15 years of civil war, that industry almost entirely ceased to exist, and in the years that followed, everything had to be built from scratch. Today, visual artists and filmmakers are leading a new wave: an experimental documentary approach to filmmaking. Evocative video works and cinematic essays question, in part, the nature of a modern post-war society in a cosmopolitan Middle Eastern city. This evolution has led to the use of expressive film language, granting more independence and integrity to the filmmakers who negotiate both censorship and taboo from within society. On the other hand, the reception and the acceptance of a new cinematic language, by a society that is both cosmopolitan and conservative, has led to the gradual development of filmmaking practices in Lebanon – more provocative, wild and even crazy. “The Revolutionary” is a screening program that brings together a selection of short videos by contemporary Lebanese filmmakers and artists currently experimenting with this field of filmmaking, politically and artistically. As witnesses to a conflict that continues to spread across the region today, and with growing international acknowledgment of the visual practices responding to it, we have all become spectators, observers of a revolution leading to an unknown future.

With videos by Marwa Arsanios, Ali Cherri, Roy Dib, Mounira El Solh,  Ahmad Ghossein, Wael Noureddine, Haig Papazian, Siska.