Fw> Jayce Salloum qr video release

[Anna Balint]

A new videotape by Jayce Salloum, everything and nothing
40:40, France/Canada, 2001
English and French subtitled versions available. An 
intimate dialogue that weaves back and forth between 
representations of a
figure (of resistance) and subject, with Soha Bechara ex-
Lebanese National
Resistance fighter in her Paris dorm room after release 
from captivity in
El-Khiam torture and interrogation centre (S. Lebanon) 
where she had been
detained for 10 years, 6 years in isolation. For 
distribution please contact:
V Tape, Toronto
www.Vtape.org
chrisak at Vtape.org
or
Video Data Bank, Chicago
www.VDB.org
info at VDB.org -- Full videotape description:
                                               
    everything and nothing  (part 1 from the continuous 
tape, ‘untitled’)
Š Jayce Salloum, 40:40, orig format MiniDV, France/Canada, 
2001
English and French subtitled versions available. An 
intimate dialogue that weaves back and forth between 
representations of a
figure (of resistance) and subject with, *Soha Bechara ex-
Lebanese National
Resistance fighter in her Paris dorm room taped (during the 
last year of the
Israeli occupation) one year after her release from 
captivity in El-Khiam
torture and interrogation centre (S. Lebanon) where she had 
been detained for
10 years, 6 years in isolation. Revising notions of 
resistance, survival and
will, recounting to death, separation and closeness; the 
overexposed image
and body of a surviving martyr speaking quietly and 
directly into the camera
juxtaposed against her self and image, not speaking of the 
torture but of the
distance between the subject and the loss, of what is left 
behind and what
remains. *Soha Bechara is a heroine in Lebanon, pictures of 
her are seen in many
houses in the South and posters of her were seen all around 
downtown Beirut
when I was working there in the early 90’s. She was 
captured in 1988  for
trying to assassinate the general of the SLA, Antoine Lahad 
(the South
Lebanese Army was a proxy militia set up & controlled by 
the Israeli forces
to give a Lebanese façade to the occupation of South 
Lebanon). I didn't ask
her anything specifically about the torture she underwent 
or the trauma of
detention, she was being interviewed to death by the 
European and Arab press
over the details of her captivity and the minutiae of her 
surviving it and
the conditions in El-Khiam and the detainees and the 
resistance. I went to
her small dorm room, not much bigger than her cell (she is 
presently studying
international law at the Sorbonne), she sat on her bed and 
I asked her about
the distance lived between Khiam and Paris, and Beirut and 
Paris, and what
she left in Khiam and what she brought with her, a story 
about flowers and
how she never puts them in water, how it felt for her now 
to be under such
demand, and who she was, and what the title of the tape 
should be, and a few
other things. This video material that I recorded of the 
time spent with her
is not precious, just time and a conversation, and intense 
intimacy at a
close and unbreachable distance. Screenings to date 
of "everything and nothing" include; MoneyNations2,
Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna; Ayam Bayrout al Cinemaiya, 
Beirut; Santa
Monica Museum of Art; Arab Screen Independent Film 
Festival, Doha, Qatar;
Artists Television Access/Arab Film Festival, San 
Francisco; Arab & Iranian
Film Festival, NYC; Argos Film & Video Festival, Brussels; 
The World Wide
Video Festival, Amsterdam; The Museum of Civilization, 
Hull, QuĂŠbec; Biennale
de l’image en Mouvement (Biennial of Moving Images), 
Geneva; Signal & Noise
Festival, Vancouver; Pacific Film Archives - University Art 
Museum, Berkeley;
Sarah Lawrence College, New York; and upcoming at the 
Centre for the
Contemporary Image, Geneva and YYZ, Toronto. ---- 
other related works: This is Not Beirut/ There was and 
there was not
Jayce Salloum, 49 min., Lebanon/USA/Canada, Š 1994
This Is Not Beirut is a personal essay on the popular 
misrepresentations of
Lebanon and Beirut which documents the filmmaker's own 
experiences while
working in Lebanon.  Aware of its own conceptual baggage, 
the tape situates
itself between genres in order to better expose commonplace 
assumptions.  The
examination is thus liberated to realize the actual 
complexities of the
identities of artist and subject.  The result is a critical 
engagement of the
disparities and disjunctions arising on site. ---
Talaeen a Junuub/Up to the South  
Jayce Salloum + Walid Ra’ad, 60 min., Lebanon/USA/Canada, 
1993
An oblique, albeit powerful documentary which examines the 
current
conditions, politics and economics of South Lebanon.  The 
tape focuses on the
social, intellectual and popular resistance to the Israeli 
occupation, as
well as conceptions of 'the land' and culture, and the 
imperiled identities
of the Lebanese people.  Simultaneously the tape self-
consciously engages in
a parallel critique of the documentary genre and its 
traditions. ---
Muqaddimah Li-Nihayat Jidal  (Introduction to the End of an 
Argument)
Speaking for oneself .../Speaking for others....
Jayce Salloum & Elia Suleiman, 45 min., 1990, USA/Palestine
With a combination of Hollywood, European and Israeli film, 
documentary, news
coverage and excerpts of 'live' footage shot in the West 
Bank and Gaza strip,
Introduction to the End of an Argument critiques 
representations of the
Middle East, Arab culture, and the Palestinian people 
produced by the West.