Salloum at UCLA Film and Television Archive & L.A Freewaves

[JSalloum at aol.com]

The UCLA Film and Television Archive 
& L.A Freewaves present:

in/tangible cartographies: new arab video
curated by Jayce Salloum

Thurday, November 14
7:30 p.m.
Works by: Elia Suleiman, Walid Ra’ad, Rashid Masharawi, Akram Zaatari, Hassan 
Khan, Tawfik Abu-Wael, Mounir Fatmi, Azza Al Zarouni, (see full program notes 
below).

&

Sunday, November 17
7:00 p.m.
"untitled," recent videotapes by Jayce Salloum, 1999-2002

Tonight, Jayce Salloum, curator of our "in/tangible cartographies: new arab 
video" exhibition, will present his own "untitled" project, an ongoing 
videotape addressing subjects living through crises/change, personal 
interventions in political realities, and the overarching theme of  
interstitiality. In part 1: everything and nothing (1999-2001, 40 mins.), 
Salloum, off-camera, talks with Soha Bechara, the ex-Lebanese National 
Resistance fighter who was detained for 10 years in the notorious El-Khiam 
torture and interrogation center in South Lebanon. In a riveting and intimate 
conversation, Salloum inquires about home, being interviewed to  death, 
resistance, survival, and the distance between Paris, where Bechara now 
lives, and Khiam. In part 2: beauty and the east (1999-2002, 
work-in-progress, excerpt c. 20 mins.), Salloum turns obliquely to the former 
Yugoslavia. In a kaleidoscope of interviews, refugees, migrants, asylum 
seekers, and residents address topics ranging from identity and fascism to 
optimism and monsters. In both anecdotal and theoretical recountings, they 
lay out the issues currently at stake in this region of displacement and 
redefinition; their words are located within images of cities and landscapes. 
Also shown will be a preview sequence of part 3: (as if) beauty never ends… 
(2002, 11 mins.), in which a montage of orchids blooming and footage from the 
sites of the 1982 massacres at Lebanon's Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps p
rovides an elegiac response to the Palestinian dispossession. 


Events are at the James Bridges Theater in Melnitz Hall, located on the 
northeast corner of the UCLA Westwood campus, near the intersection of Sunset 
Boulevard and Hilgard Avenue. Tickets are available at the theater one hour 
before showtime.  Admission is $7 general, $5 students, seniors and UCLA 
Alumni Association members with ID. Parking is available adjacent to the 
James Bridges Theater in Lot 3 for $7. For further information, please call 
(310) 206-FILM or visit www.cinema.ucla.edu.

----
Full program notes below:

The UCLA Film and Television Archive & L.A Freewaves
Present

in/tangible cartographies: new arab video

We have (too) many images for this place/this region and as many names, but 
none of them is accurate or adequate: Middle East, Near East, North Africa, 
Maghreb, Levant, Holy Land, Arab world, Muslim world, the Orient. We have too 
few names for the people of these places. There is a certain violence in not 
naming, just as there is an innate violence in the naming (i.e., "terrorist" 
or "prisoner") that we engage in.

     This place (these people) has been over- and under-reproduced throughout 
the history of its representation by its visitors, its conquerors, its 
"allies" and those who are passing through. These representations are ours. 
We are implicated within these constructions.

     in/tangible cartographies seeks to provide an audience for a range of 
work by Arab videomakers living in this (unnameable) region. It also includes 
the work of those in exile, or "dispossession," as are Palestinian 
videomakers inside and outside of the "occupied territories." In lieu of 
being silenced and having one’s existence ignored or obliterated, these works 
account for marginalized voices of experience, composing a history denied and 
substantiating a concrete body of work.—Jayce Salloum

This program is curated by Jayce Salloum, a media artist, curator and 
cultural activist currently living in Vancouver, Canada.
Essay and notes by Jayce Salloum, abridged from a longer version.
All works are on video; formats vary.


Thursday, November 14
7:30 p.m.
in/tangible cartographies: 
sliding life through narrow spaces forced into (cracks) where rivers could 
not (yet) flow…

UPSIDE DOWN
(Makloubeh)
(Palestine, 1999) Directed by Rashid Masharawi
The preparation of makloubeh, a traditional Palestinian dish, is served up as 
image and substance, reflecting on the nature of nourishment, the land and 
culture. Masharawi uses a respectful humor and a bucolic freshness of images 
in this short treatise on Palestinian identity.
In Arabic with English subtitles, 5 min.

CYBERPALESTINE
(Palestine, 2000) Directed by Elia Suleiman
Displaying sardonic wit and attention to detail, Suleiman creates a terse but 
forceful transposition of the biblical story of Mary and Joseph to illustrate 
the repressive control of movement and the abuses of daily Palestinian life 
suffered under Israeli military occupation.
Intertitles in Arabic and English, 16 min.

BLUE
(United Arab Emirates, 2000) Directed by Azza Al Zarouni
Private space as discomforting comfort zone at home in Abu Dhabi. Ubiquitous 
cell phone ringing punctuates this stream of dissatisfaction with pop culture 
salvation.
3 min.

RED CHEWING GUM
(Al-llka Al Hamra)
(Lebanon, 2000) Directed by Akram Zaatari
Within the changing urban environment of Beirut, two souls find themselves in 
a cycle of loss, departure, rupture and celebration. An impressive video lett
er inspired by a story of separation between men.
In Arabic with English and French subtitles, 10 min.

FUCK THIS FILM
(Kos om el film dah)
(Egypt, 1998) Directed by Hassan Khan 
Surrounded by a multitude of reasons to tape and seeing none, the videomaker 
runs at life with a soul lost to despondency.
In Arabic with English subtitles, 4 min.

SURVIVAL SIGNS
(Morocco/France, 1998) Directed by Mounir Fatmi
Fatmi analyzes how language has lost its power of understanding and 
communication; "deep in the mouth, the tongue is nothing more than a muscle." 
Full of clutter, the tape shows how speech and the corollary of being heard 
are necessary ingredients for survival. In French and German with English 
subtitles, 13 min.

THE DEAD WEIGHT OF A QUARREL HANGS
(Lebanon/US, 1996-99) Directed by Walid Ra’ad
A videotape in three parts exploring the possibilities and limits of writing 
and imaging a history of the Lebanese civil wars (1975-1991).
17 min.

DIARY OF A MALE WHORE
(Yawmeyat A’her)
(Palestine, 2001) Directed by Tawfik Abu-Wael
A videotape about memory positioning itself in relation to the "other," it 
can be seen as a metaphorical account of the Israeli-Palestinian "peace 
process." Based loosely on the novel For Bread Alone by Moroccan writer 
Mohamed Choukri.
In Arabic with English subtitles, 14 min.

Total running time: 82 min.

In person: Jayce Salloum


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Sunday, November 17
7:00 p.m.
"untitled," recent works by Jayce Salloum

untitled part 2: beauty and the east (excerpt)
(2002)
In a kaleidoscope of interviews from the former Yugoslavia, refugees, 
migrants, asylum seekers and residents address topics ranging from identity 
and fascism to optimism and monsters. In both anecdotal and theoretical 
recountings, they lay out the issues currently at stake in this region of 
displacement and redefinition. 
25 min.

untitled part 3b: (as if) beauty never ends…
(2002)
Ambient images—orchids blooming, plants growing, clouds and water—are 
superimposed over raw footage of the carnage at the Sabra and Shatila refugee 
camps in Lebanon after the 1982 massacre, with the voiceover of Abdel Majid 
Fadl Ali Hassan (a 1948 refugee living in Bourg El Barajneh camp) recounting 
a story told by the rubble of his home in Palestine.
11 min.

untitled part 1: everything and nothing
(2001)
An intimate dialogue with ex-Lebanese National Resistance fighter Soha 
Bechara in Paris, taped (during the last year of the Israeli occupation) one 
year after her release from captivity in El-Khiam torture and interrogation 
centre in Lebanon where she was detained for 10 years, six in isolation. 
41 min.

Total running time: 77 min.

In person: Jayce Salloum



for more info and clips on Jayce Salloum's video work:
http://www.vdb.org/smackn.acgi$artistdetail?SALLOUMJ
http://www.wwvf.nl/2001/programme/0salloum.htm
http://www.cinematheque.bc.ca/JayceUntitled.html



TV OR NOT TV, L.A. Freewaves’ 8th Celebration of Experimental Media Arts, 
takes place throughout greater Los Angeles during the entire month of 
November. Selected from a wide pool of entries, TV OR NOT TV's extraordinary 
programs present puzzling questions and dynamic alternatives to 
corporate-filtered entertainment and alarmist, biased news reporting: 
www.freewaves.org


Events are at the James Bridges Theater in Melnitz Hall, located on the
northeast corner of the UCLA Westwood campus, near the intersection of
Sunset Boulevard and Hilgard Avenue.

Tickets for events at the James Bridges Theater are available at the theater
one hour before showtime.  Admission is $7 general, $5 students, seniors and
UCLA Alumni Association members with ID.

Parking is available adjacent to the James Bridges Theater in Lot 3 for $7.
For further information, please call (310) 206-FILM or visit
www.cinema.ucla.edu.