The project explores the cinematic gaze towards queer bodies as well as their constant absence from the recurrent narrative or collective memory. It started with the discovery of 80s pornographic found footage and so we asked ourselves the question, what if this was found in a dilapidated house? What if instead of the process of the image disintegrating, we bring it to life as if the disintegrated lives of queer women that were meant to stay unseen or disfigured or left to rot slowly come to life and assert their presence within the context of the 80s in Lebanon, a period so overtly represented by war and violence and from which all narrative about personal lives and intimacy is removed.
16mm D2F | 1440x1080 | 8'45” | 23.98 fps/ips
Super8mm/ Found footage
Distribué par / Distributed by:
2022: Recipient of the Cinema al Fouad and Beirut DC Production Grant
2022: Recipient of the Explore and Create: From Concept to Realization - Canada Council for the Arts fund
2022: Recipient of the Vivacité fund of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec for development
Philadelphia, U.S.A. 12G twelve gates arts: Contemporary Video Art Exhibition, 2023
Guanajuato, Mexico: Experimental Film Guanajuato, 2023
Chichinau, Moldova: Queer voices, 2023
Winnipeg, Canada: WNDX Festival of Moving Image, 2023
Stockhholm, Sweden: Cinema Queer, 2023
Regina, Canada: Queer City Cinema, 2023
Toronto, Canada: Toronto Arab Film Festival, 2023
Traces
[Essai expérimental, Liban/Canada, 2023]
[Experimental essay, Lebanon/Canada, 2023]
Beirut 1980: Amid the rubble of a torn building, a reel of film. An unlikely unraveling of queer bodies taking shape and form, while the war-torn city around and its spectacle of toxic masculinity glitches and disintegrates.
ين أنقاض أحد المباني، بَكَرةُ فيلم. تمظهرٌ غير اعتيادي لأجساد كويرية آخذة بالتبلور شكلاً وحيّزاً في حين أن المدينة التي احتلتها الذكورية ومزقتها الحرب تتعطل وتتفكك
Au milieu des décombres d'un immeuble déchiré, une bobine de film. Un dénouement improbable de corps queer prenant forme, tandis que la ville déchirée par la guerre et son spectacle de masculinités s'effondre et se désintègre.