On “Arab Shorts”
Arab Shorts is a project designed in 2009 by the Goethe-Institut Cairo and Berlin curator and filmmaker Marcel Schwierin.
In December 2009 nine curated film programmes compiled by eleven curators from the Middle East and North Africa were established online and also presented on a cinema screen at a Festival event at the Goethe-Institut Cairo.
The project makes use of the vast potential of the Internet as a powerful and alternative platform for the presentation and circulation of independent films beyond the festival circuit and beyond conventional distribution networks. For the first time, viewers can have unlimited access to a large pool of films, and information that they would otherwise not have had the chance to peruse.
Bringing together more than sixty-three short fictional films, documentaries, animations, video art, experimental films and everything in between, www.arabshorts.net presents a multiplicity of perspectives on independent filmmaking featured from the point of view of each curator. Moreover, the curators themselves wear multiple hats, from actors, directors and producers to critics and artists.
Each film programme limits itself to the productions and co-productions of one country, with the exception of the Arabian Gulf region. Film programmes are composed of a selection of four to ten short films (less than sixty minutes), predominantly produced in the last ten years. The films are accompanied by newly commissioned texts by the curators, curatorial statements, films synopses and biographies of filmmakers and curators. The discursive layer of the project is an integral component in an attempt to present a nuanced account of each scene, and to delve deeper into its historical, economic, social, political and cultural specificities.
Collectively, this exciting and novel compilation raises pertinent questions about a broad range of topics and issues such as the definition of independent production, censorship, migration and mobility national identities, gender politics, urban trajectories and post-war conditions. www.arabshorts.net provides a provisional map of independent film production in this complex region.
In December 2009 nine curated film programmes compiled by eleven curators from the Middle East and North Africa were established online and also presented on a cinema screen at a Festival event at the Goethe-Institut Cairo.
The project makes use of the vast potential of the Internet as a powerful and alternative platform for the presentation and circulation of independent films beyond the festival circuit and beyond conventional distribution networks. For the first time, viewers can have unlimited access to a large pool of films, and information that they would otherwise not have had the chance to peruse.
Bringing together more than sixty-three short fictional films, documentaries, animations, video art, experimental films and everything in between, www.arabshorts.net presents a multiplicity of perspectives on independent filmmaking featured from the point of view of each curator. Moreover, the curators themselves wear multiple hats, from actors, directors and producers to critics and artists.
Each film programme limits itself to the productions and co-productions of one country, with the exception of the Arabian Gulf region. Film programmes are composed of a selection of four to ten short films (less than sixty minutes), predominantly produced in the last ten years. The films are accompanied by newly commissioned texts by the curators, curatorial statements, films synopses and biographies of filmmakers and curators. The discursive layer of the project is an integral component in an attempt to present a nuanced account of each scene, and to delve deeper into its historical, economic, social, political and cultural specificities.
Collectively, this exciting and novel compilation raises pertinent questions about a broad range of topics and issues such as the definition of independent production, censorship, migration and mobility national identities, gender politics, urban trajectories and post-war conditions. www.arabshorts.net provides a provisional map of independent film production in this complex region.
Based on a text by Aleya Hamza
