[van-announce] Salloum videotapes at Pacific Cinematheque, Feb. 22, 7PM (r-z)

[JSalloum at aol.com]

A program of videotapes by Jayce Salloum:

untitled part 1: everything and nothing, 40 mins.
untitled part 3b: (as if) beauty never ends, 12 mins.

Tuesday, February 22, 7:PM at the Pacific Cinematheque
#200-1131 Howe St, Vancouver
(604)688-8202

With introduction and Q&A with the videomaker.
Admission $8. Special deal: Movie & a "Free Palestine" T-shirt $12 
Event fundraiser for the Palestinian Solidarity Group 
& the Palestinian Community Centre.

-
everything and nothing  part 1 from the continuous tape, 'untitled'
Jayce Salloum, 40:40, Arabic & French with English subtitles, France/Canada, 
2001

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.


(as if) beauty never ends..  part 3b from the continuous tape, 'untitled'
Jayce Salloum, 11:22, Arabic with English subtitles, Lebanon/Canada, 2002

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.

--
Full Descriptions:

untitled part 1: everything and nothing
Jayce Salloum, 40:40, Arabic & French with English subtitles, France/Canada, 
2001

The first installment from the ongoing tape, 'untitled'. An intimate dialogue 
that weaves 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 (during the last year of the Israeli occupation) one 
year after her release from captivity in El-Khiam torture and interrogation 
centre (S. Lebanon) where she had been detained for 10 years, 6 years in 
isolation. Revising notions of resistance, survival and will, recounting to death, 
separation and closeness; the overexposed image and body of a surviving martyr 
speaking quietly and directly into the camera juxtaposed against her self and 
image, not speaking of the torture but of the distance between the subject and 
the loss, of what is left behind and what remains.

*Soha Bechara is a heroine in Lebanon, pictures of her are seen in many 
houses in the South and posters of her were seen all around downtown Beirut when I 
was working there in the early 90's. She was captured in 1988   for trying to 
assassinate the general of the SLA, Antoine Lahad (the South Lebanese Army was 
a proxy militia set up & controlled by the Israeli forces to give a Lebanese 
façade to the occupation of South Lebanon). I didn't ask her anything 
specifically about the torture she underwent or the trauma of detention, she was being 
interviewed to death by the European and Arab press over the details of her 
captivity and the minutiae of her surviving it and the conditions in El-Khiam 
and the detainees and the resistance. I went to her small dorm room, not much 
bigger than her cell (she is presently studying international law at the 
Sorbonne), she sat on her bed and I asked her about the distance lived between Khiam 
and Paris, and Beirut and Paris, and what she left in Khiam and what she 
brought with her, a story about flowers and how she never puts them in water, how 
it felt for her now to be under such demand, and who she was, and what the 
title of the tape should be, and a few other things. This video material that I 
recorded of the time spent with her is not precious, just time and a 
conversation, and intense intimacy at a close and unbreachable distance.



untitled part 3b: (as if) beauty never ends..
Jayce Salloum, 11:22, Arabic with English subtitles, Lebanon/Canada, 2002

A more ambient work of many things, including orchids blooming, and plants 
growing, superimposed over raw footage from post massacre filmings of the 1982 
massacre at Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon. Cloud footage, Hubbell 
space imagery, the visible body crosscuts, and abstract shots of slow motion 
water, add to this reflection of the past, its present context and forbearance. 
With the voice over of Abdel Majid Fadl Ali Hassan (a 1948 refugee living in 
Bourg El Barajneh camp) recounting a story told by the rubble of his home in 
Palestine, and the collection of audio accompanying the clips, the tape 
permeates into an intense essay on dystopia in contemporary times. Working directly, 
viscerally, and metaphorically the videotape provides an elegiac response to 
the Palestinian dispossession.














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