"Making films out of already existing images often entails a certain process of discovery. It is no wonder that we frequently speak of Found Footage. This filmmaking gesture can lead to the unearthing of images that were lost, absent or erased or the detection, in familiar images, of new potential meanings that were until now hidden or invisible.

The works presented in this program fall under the second category. Second Hand Fictions looks at the re-use of images that have, in one way or another, shaped our imaginaries. From pop-culture and commercial films, to newsreels and pornography, the films shown here deconstruct the myths of power, beauty, sexuality and consumerism that we have grown up with in Lebanon, myths that conceal structures of oppression, violence and abuse. They reveal the inevitable fetishisation of a golden era of bygone cinemas and movie stars and underline the dangers of being dazzled by the fiction that the past was a better time and thus forgetting that another future is and always will be possible."

Special screening:

Videoex Film Festival   |   21 - 29 May  2022
Part of the Arab Wave:  Second hand fictions program