Katsakh | քացախ is the Armenian word for vinegar.

The "Katsakh: Mediterranean Archives" project stands as a personal collection comprising non-fiction films captured on super 8mm and 16mm cameras throughout the towns and villages of the eastern Mediterranean from the 1920s to the 1970s. A compilation to encapsulate the diverse life and culture of the region.
In "Katsakh," each film is both a capsule of life and culture, as well as a symbol of the struggle for memory. The fragility of these archives, captured between the 1920s and 1970s, highlights the importance of bringing them back to life. By redefining these archives, I aim not only to preserve them but to recontextualize them so that they can inspire new stories and dreams. The work thus becomes an act of resistance, a celebration of life in a world that tends to erase them. This project embodies the possibility of a gentle revolt against annihilation, reminding us that our memory is an essential pillar of our identity and our quest for liberation.

For inquiries or further information, please contact us via email at katsakh.project@gmail.com

• CRIalt - Centre de recherches intermédiales sur les arts, les lettres et les techniques : Les archives visuelles de la Méditerranée – Présentation du projet KATSAKH
• Home Movie Day - Paris: Ciné Concert.  La 10e édition du Home Movie Day Paris aura lieu le samedi 12 octobre à la Générale. Apportez vos films pour l'Open Screen et découvrez des images d'archives précieuses autour de l'Algérie, la Palestine, le Liban, l'Italie, l'Egypte, la Jordanie
• Symposium XP - symposium sur le cinéma expérimental- Montréal - Journal d'une occupation : films et images tournées en Palestine (1920-2024). Performance musicale live de Sam Shalabi accompagnée d'images d'archives de la collection 'Katsakh' tournées en Palestine, Liban Sud, Jordanie (1920-2011).
• Radical film Network - Madrid Espagne: Katsakh: In search of mediterranean archives, Juin 2024
• Festival du film franco-arabe de Noisy-le-Sec Samedi 25 novembre 2023 Projection de films de famille 8 et 16 mm numérisés et assemblés par Chantal Partamian, accompagnés musicalement au oud par le soliste Damien Sarret
• Galerie Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery: Mediterranean Explorations: Evolving archives and varied perspectivesà
• Lebanese film festival Canada, Katsakh: Reconstruction d'une mémoire imagée.   Juin 2023
• Réactualiser les archives pour une histoire au présent, Festival Aflam, Marseille, 2022
• European Media Art Festival № 34 - 21/04 -02/05 - Osnabrueck - Germany Artist and curator Nour Ouayda (Beirut) presents a series on the history and present of video art in Lebanon. In Show Us the Money and We Will Resist, she traces the role that the resources and networks of Lebanese television played in the development of video art in the 1990s, and what new media infrastructures have taken their place to enable both artistic experimentation and intervention in society.
• International Short Film Festival Oberhausen 2021 Under the title "Prophecies from the Sea", the curators are showing a programme "about the prophetic nature of cinematic works created in moments of transition". This includes both recent films that deal directly with the catastrophic explosion in Beirut a year ago, its causes and consequences, and older works that focus on earlier historical upheavals in Lebanon and its conflict-ridden history. Films by Chantal Partamian, Ali Cherri, the Atlas Group and Ghassan Salhab, among others, will be screened.

Katsakh in the press:

• Le Blog du Festival du film franco-arabe: Rencontre avec Chantal Partamian : autour de son projet KATSAKH 2 décembre 2023
• Al-modon:  ترميم الذاكرة المصوّرة...شانْتال برتميان: أتلفْ أرشيفاً تَمحُ شعباً, زكي محفوض , 2023/06/21
• Analog Cookbook, University of North Carolina Press, Issue #5, 2022: Analog futures | Katsakh