Rencontres A Beyrouth (Part 3) (Thursday, May 10, 2012) :: Beirut.com

8 pm: Our Country Doesn't Exist
Libia Castro & Ólafur Ólafsson| video | hdv | color | 00:06:00 | Spain / Iceland / Italy | 2011 [English, French Subtitles]
, Christophe Karabache,Wadi khaled | exp. documentary | super 8 | color | 00:15:00 | France, Lebanon | 2008 [French, English Subtitles]
Vartan Avakian,Short Wave/Long Wave | video | sd | color | 00:07:00 | Lebanon | 2010
Christian BaraniMy Dubaï Life | exp. documentary | hdv | color | 01:00:00 | France / Dubai | 2011 [English, French Subtitles]

Libia Castro and Ólafur Ólafsson present a video of a performance made in Venice where a mezzo soprano on a gondola announces in several languages to the Venetian and the tourists: «your country does not exist». Christoph Karabache films the Bedouins and the inhabitants from the northern border (Wadi Khaled) between Lebanon and Syria, a people deprived of identity, a land with neither faces nor words. Vartan Akavian films a city in search of anonymity and to record his name in it. Christian Barani walks and films in a city where nothing is thought for the body in movement, a city built by and for the flows. He walks to get lost in these areas of fiction and to build randomly. No sequence is recorded twice.

10 pm: Habitations
10pm
HABITATIONS

Elsa Fauconnet: Le terrier (2) | exp. fiction | dv | color | 00:05:17 | France | 2011 [No Dialogue]
Ugnius Gelguda: A Paradise Tree | video | hdv | color | 00:06:40 | Lithuania | 2011 [No Dialogue]
Léa Van Steen: Favela | video | hdv | color | 00:01:13 | Brazil | 2010 [No Dialogue]
Raphaël Grisey: Minhocão [The big worm] | documentary | hdv | color and b&w | 00:31:00 | France / Brazil | 2010 [Portuguese, English Subtitles]
Prokop Vignon: sans titre | video | hdv | color | 00:03:36 | France | 2010 [No Dialogue]
André Fortino, Thomas Jeames: 866 Feroce | video | hdv | color | 00:09:06 | France | 2011 [French, English Subtitles]
Cynthia Zaven: Dear Victoria | video | 00:08:00 | Lebanon / Armenia | 2011 [No Dialogue]
Siska: EDL | exp. film | 00:21:00 | Lebanon | 2011 [No Dialogue]

Elsa Fauconnet bases her work on a short story by Kafka, a couple walks down a street where no one knows if the houses are under construction or have been destroyed. Ugnius Gelguda films a neighborhood in Vilnius, compared to SoHo, and tells the forced beginning of a new urban community. Léa Van Steen shoots a traveling shot along a favela, at the border of a city within the city. Raphael Grisey films the suburb of Rio de Janeiro. A car moves broadcasting a speech by the modernist architect Alfonso Eduardo Reidy, in the area where he has built a social housing complex in the 60s. This film portrays one of the most important modernist buildings in Brazil. Prokop Vignon films young adults in an urban environment, the movement, and the invention of new spaces. André Fortino and Thomas Jeames gather fragments of life and city, and draw an existential statement. Cynthia Zaven finds a film shot in Armenia by her grandmother 36 years earlier, and investigates notions of belonging and alienation through an encounter between two worlds. The film EDL by Siska transport us on a journey behind the modernist façade of Beirut’s electricity building, reinterprets spaces of the building with a soundtrack of droning noises reminiscent of the experimental electronic sounds of the 1950s and 60s.

A drink will be served between the sessions