Halaqat - Exploring cultural links between Europe and the Arab world
Lebanon and its capital Beirut are fascinating. In the framework of the film festival "L'Heure D'Hiver Beirut" by Cinéma Galeries and the Halaqat Panorama on Documentary Film in the Arab World, we are organising two film evenings in April. After the screening, we invite you to a film discussion with the director Khalil Joreige.
'Rounds' by Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige
Rounds is a video featuring Rabih Mroué, who appears as a strangely familiar driver, filmed steering through the streets of the city. Beirut is mentioned, evoked through the driver’s stories and through sound, but never seen. Like his driving, Mroué’s stories spin in a circle.
'The Lebanese Rocket Society: The strange tale of the Lebanese Space adventure' by Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige
In the early 60s, during the cold war and the apex of Pan Arabism, a group of utopian students and researchers enters the race to space and create the Lebanese Rocket Society. Sometimes, and specially nowadays, dreams can overtake a tormented history.
Filmmakers Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige were both born in Beirut in 1969. They did not study art or cinema at a formal level but were drawn to both in their youth as a way to respond to the aftermath of the Lebanese civil war. Their work in several media is thematically and formally connected to their research and their lives and explores topics including traces of the invisible, the absent, the construction of the imaginary and the writing of contemporary history.
In partnership with
Cinema Galeries and the Mahmoud Darwish Chair.
The European project Halaqat is implemented by the Goethe-Institut in collaboration with Bozar - Centre for Fine Arts Brussels. Halaqat is co-funded by the European Commission (under the designation: EU-LAS CULTURE), the Goethe-Institut and Bozar.
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