Microcinema DVDs - RESISTANCE[S] Vol. III

Catalog Number: MC-1207	Type: Shorts Compilation	Genre: Experimental
Copyright: 2010	Length: 118 minutes	Format: DVD Region: 0
TV System: NTSC & PAL	ISBN:	UPC/EAN: 880198120793
Label: Lowave

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Films In Compilation

Houses + 1 Fence directed by Mireille and Fabian Astore Lebanon, Experimental, 2006, 00:06:00 The street scape of Broken Hill, "the accessible outback" country town of Australia, is seen from the viewing platform of a Lebanese reality. Houses, neat, some pretty, some with children playing in front collide with sounds remembered from so long ago, maybe from one of Beirut's many wars, maybe even from future wars. There, exponential repetition sets apathy on a collision course with fear where mangled silences interrupt - but only to disrupt the remnants of safe living and to send eidetic shock waves through rose-colored lenses. The question of responsibility then emerges to demand, if not an answer, then a pause for grief, for consideration due to the boundaries of the senses and the centrality of the body's - any-body's - pain and sorrow.
We Began By Measuring Distance by Basma Al-Sharif directed by Basma Al-Sharif Kuwait, Experimental, 2009, 00:19:00 Long still frames, text, language, and sound are weaved together to unfold the narrative of an anonymous group who fill their time by measuring distance. Innocent measurements become political ones, drawing an examination of how image and sound communicate history, tragedy, and the complication of Palestinian nationalism. We Began By Measuring Distance explores the ultimate disenchantment with facts when the visual fails to communicate the tragic.
Resonances directed by Ismail Bahri Tunisia, Experimental, 2008, 00:07:16 Resonances starts with the prospecting of the bathroom from my childhood. Black inked words written in Arabic on the bathtub surface scatter and propagate progressively. They resonate and echo night scene recollections. Transformed in a resonance chamber, the bathtub mixes the fluids of these evanescent thoughts. By reflecting its surroundings, the ink blurred water surface, overturns and clouds the words. The backward surge of the night reveals the scars of a troubled universe, verging on obliteration.
Revolution directed by Khaled Hafez Egypt, Experimental, 2006, 00:04:00 An experimental screen is split on the three flag colors: Red, White and Black that represent the three promises of the Pan-Arab military coup-d’etat / revolution: Social equity, Liberty and Unity. We learn throughout the 4 minute duration that what remains of the broken promises are the social equity of the military gun, the pseudo-liberty of the multinational transcontinental corporations and the unity of chopping heads representing the worldwide rising right wing religious fundamentalism.
This Smell of Sex directed by Danielle Arbid Lebanon, Experimental, 2008, 00:20:00 "My friends in Beirut freely recount their most secret, ardent and obsessive sexual experiences, in minute detail", confides Danielle Arbid, a filmmaker who has already won numerous prizes at Locarno. Archival footage of prim young girls alternates with darkened shots of men and women discussing their formative experiences and their fantasies. Their words and the visual representations create a highly poetic erotic tension.
Colored Photograph directed by Waheeda Mallulah Bahrain, Experimental, 2009, 00:01:40 Waheeda Malullah presents desires for liberty through a stop-motion animation. A group of ladies posing in front of the camera, alluding to a black and white photograph, turns color when primaries start overtaking black conservatism. Malullah presents a playful approach to social values; restrictions and freedoms, aspirations and their inadequacies.
Les Illumines directed by Halida Boughriet Algeria, Experimental, 2007, 00:01:37 With Les illuminés by Halida Boughriet, the viewer’s vision, the screen, is mixed up with that of a woman wearing a burqa, the video artist herself. The viewer sees the world - the astounded passersby she encounters on a moving sidewalk inside the Montparnasse train station in Paris – through her eyes, her obstructed vision. It is as if she is looking through a mashrabiya, a grill that covers windows and allows for seeing out without seeing in. We never see the woman’s concealed face, only her silhouette with her long and thick black clothes. Filmed in 2007, Les illuminés, though not inscribed within the current nauseating debate on the burqa, nevertheless offers a radical experience of otherness and demonstrates that apart from being symbolic, the covering of women is first of all material.
La Parade de Taos directed by Nazim Djemai Algeria, Experimental, 2009, 00:19:00 Taos, a very beautiful young lady, meets regularly a man in the zoo of Algiers. There, the couples of lovers feel ill at ease in front of the hostile glances of the walkers and find intimacy only shielded by the vegetation. One day, Taos waits in vain for her lover. For the first time, she is alone in the garden. She roams, soon harassed by a group of kids, then by a guard. This short film creates its own aesthetic with great subtlety, preferring the art of suggestion and the implicit rather than didacticism. Through its extreme attention to textures, to material and objects, La parade de Taos develops a bitter and moving view visible to the touch whose literal equivalent is situated between essay, novel and prose poetry.
Run Lara Run directed by Larissa Sansour Egypt, Experimental, 2010, 00:02:00 Run Lara Run is not just a simple oriental parody of Run Lola Run. Larissa Sansour is not sporting dyed red hair, but a helmet in the same color, an eloquent and amusing variation, her race through nature is never endingly subjected to brutal changes in viewing angles and direction as she paces along a splintered territory, disfigured by fences, barriers and walls of separation. The character’s race counterbalances the signs of enclosure and house arrest, within a given and well-defined territory.