[antiwar-van] Salloum screening at Pacific Cinematheque, June 14, 7:30

[jsalloum at aol.com]

a screening of two or three videotapes by Jayce Salloum
Thursday, June 14, 7:30 pm
Pacific Cinematheque
1131 Howe St., Vancouver

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untitled part 4: terra (in)cognita
Jayce Salloum, 38:00, 2005, nSyilxcen Nation (Okanagan)
This videotape focuses on fragments of histories, of pre-contact, contact, and settlement of the Kelowna area though the accounts of several nSyilxcen speakers. It traces connections and correlations between the periods of extermination/disintegration, assimilation, and marginalization to their present day and context of being First Nations.

--

untitled part 3: (as if) beauty never ends..
Jayce Salloum, Lebanon/Canada, 11:22, 2000-2004
An homage to the 1982 Sabra and Shatilla massacre, a reflection of the past, its present context and forbearance. Abdel Majid Fadl Ali Hassan recounts a story told by the rubble of his home in Palestine, the tape permeates into an intense essay on dystopia in contemporary times. An elegiac response working directly, viscerally, and metaphorically.

--

untitled part 1: everything and nothing
(excerpt)
Jayce Salloum, 40:40, France/Canada, 2001 (1999)
An intimate dialogue weaving back and forth between representations of a figure (of resistance) and subject, with Soha Bechara, ex-Lebanese National Resistance fighter in her Paris dorm room taped one year after release from captivity in El-Khiam torture and interrogation centre (S. Lebanon) where she had been detained for 10 years, 6 years in isolation.



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Cinémathèque press release:
terra (in)cognita: recent works by Jayce Salloum
Jayce Salloum - In Person @ Pacific Cinémathèque
June 14, 2007
Pacific Cinémathèque, 1131 Howe Street, Vancouver
http://www.cinematheque.bc.ca/may_jun_07/jaysalloum.htm

VANCOUVER -- Discover why controversial Vancouver-based media artist, social activist and curator Jayce Salloum has been censored by galleries, museums and government institutions as Pacific Cinémathèque presents terra incognita, a selection of his most challenging video works. Internationally renown for his provocative, experimental and often intensely personal fashion, media and Western cultural representation of Lebanon, the Middle East and the Arab world, this talented artist centers his feature work on the troubled relationship between the N'Syilx'cen (Okanagan First Nation) people and the Europeans colonizers who settled in and around Mr. Salloum's hometown of Kelowna, B.C.

The works screening form part of Mr. Salloum's untitled series, an ongoing, open-ended project in which Mr. Salloum continues to raise and critically engage various issues of national and transnational identity, representation, ethnicity, migration, assimilation, exile, refuge, home, landscape, and conflict. Salloum, who is of Lebanese descent, has garnered much controversy for exploring complex themes and modes of representation, particularly in the Middle East. A piece from the untitled series dealing with the Israeli-Arab conflict -- untitled part 1: everything and nothing (1999-2001) -- became centre of the controversy at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Hull, when, in the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks, the museum sought to postpone The Lands Within Me, an exhibition of works by Arab-Canadian artists.

Salloum's most recent piece -- untitled part 4: terra incognita -- was the subject of another controversy when the City of Kelowna, which had commissioned the piece as part of their 2005 centennial celebrations, rejected it as "not celebratory enough," and cancelled an entire gallery exhibition featuring video works by Mr. Salloum and six other artists.

"What the City was saying to the First Nations people -- the Sylix (Okanagans) -- was that they could participate in city events, dance, sing and make and sell crafts, but we don't want to hear about your histories, or know your stories, as part of our official history," Salloum suggests, touching on some of the geo-political implications of colonization, settlement and immigration that exist even within the Canadian context.

Jayce Salloum will be in attendance to introduce this screening of his work and participate in a Q&A afterwards.


-- FILM BRIEFS --

untitled part 1: everything and nothing [Excerpt]
Canada/France 1999-2002. Director: Jayce Salloum
Jayce Salloum, off-camera, talks with (Ms.) Soha Bechara, a former Lebanese National Resistance fighter who was detained for ten years in the notorious El-Khiam torture and interrogation centre in South Lebanon, and was later the subject of intense media interest in the European and Arab press. In a riveting and intimate conversation, Salloum inquires about home, resistance, survival, and the distance between Paris, where Bechara now lives, and Khiam. Colour, mini DV, in Arabic and French with English subtitles. Excerpt.

untitled part 3b: (as if) beauty never ends...
Canada/Lebanon 2000-2004. Director: Jayce Salloum
In this elegiac yet visceral response to the Palestinian dispossession, a montage of orchids blooming, clouds billowing, water flowing, and space imagery from the Hubbell telescope is superimposed over raw footage from the aftermath of the 1982 massacres at Lebanon's Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps. Colour, mini DV, in Arabic with English subtitles. 11 mins.

untitled part 4: terra in cognita
Canada/N'Syilx'cen (Okanagan) First Nation 2005. Director: Jayce Salloum
Jayce Salloum's moving, multi-layered experimental documentary explores landscape and loss as it recounts, from a First Nations perspective, the European colonization and settlement of what is now Kelowna in south-central B.C. Various speakers of N'Syilx'cen (Okanagan) descent describe the terrible legacy -- biological warfare, residential schools, the reserve system, cultural decimation -- of European contact. Colour, mini DV. 38 mins.


Thursday, June 14
7:30 pm
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$9.50 Adult Single Bill / $8.00 Senior/Student Single Bill
$11.50 Adult Double Bill / $10.00 Senior/Student Double Bill
Advance tickets available at www.cinematheque.bc.ca
24hr Film Infoline: 604 688 FILM

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Media Contact:
Mauree Aki Matsusaka
Marketing and Communication Assistant
Pacific Cinémathèque
604 688 8202 x222
mauree.matsusaka at cinematheque.bc.ca