Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the Frontline
Date and Time
Dec 3, 2014 5:00 pm
Location
450K
450 K St NW, Washington, District of Columbia, 20001
Dec 3, 2014 5:00 pm
450K
Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the Frontline is a panel discussion and screening of recent short films produced by Syrian video collectives based on the book Syria Speaks (Saqi Press, U.S. release Oct 2014). The book captures one of the most significant cultural resistance movements in the Arab World in response to the start of the Syrian uprising in March 2011.
Panelists will include Malu Halasa and Zaher Omareen (editors of Syria Speaks), and Syrian filmmaker Oussama Mohamed (director of Silvered Water-Syria Self Portrait) and artist Khalil Younes, whose work is included in the anthology. The artists will share their work and experiences and engage in a discussion with the audience.
Biographies
Malu Halasa is an editor and writer based in London. Her books include Creating Spaces of Freedom: Culture in Defiance (2002); Kaveh Golestan: Recording the Truth in Iran (2007) and The Secret Life of Syrian Lingerie: Intimacy and Design (2008), with Rana Salam. She also co-edits the occasional book series, Transit, which features new Middle Eastern writing and visual culture, and includes Transit Beirut (2004) and Transit Tehran (2008), the latter co-edited with with Maziar Bahari. She also co-curated three exhibitions of Syria’s art of resistance in 2012–13 in Amsterdam, Copenhagen and London. Her essays, publications, exhibitions and lectures showcase the culture and politics of a complex and changing Middle East.
Zaher Omareen is a Syrian writer who has worked on independent cultural initiatives in Syria and Europe. His short story ‘First Safety Maneuver’ won a prize awarded by the Danish Institute in Damascus and the 2012 Copenhagen Festival of Literature. Omareen is a participating artist in the Victoria and Albert forthcoming exhibition Disobedient Objects and has been working on the new Syrian art archive at the British Museum. A PhD candidate at Goldsmiths College, he also is completing a collection of short stories drawn from the 1982 Hama massacre.
Ossama Mohammed: is a Syrian film director and screenwriter.He graduated from the Russian State Institute of Cinematography in 1979 and has produced short documentaries. His first feature film, Nujum al-Nahar (Stars in Broad Daylight), in 1988, was never screened publically in Syria and was selected at the Cannes Film Festival’s Quinzaine des Réalisateurs. His second, Sunduq al-Dunya (Sacrifices) was selected for the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard category in 2002. He is currently living in exile in Paris, where he collaborated on SILVERED WATER, SYRIA SELF-PORTRAIT.
Khalil Younes is a Syrian artist a freelance Cinematographer, Illustrator and Video Artist. Born in Damascus, Syria, he moved to the United States in 1998. Khalil’s work has been honored in the United States and in Europe. He holds a degree in Cinematography from the Columbia College in C
Presented by the Middle East Institute, Global Talks at Busboys and Poets, the British Council and the Open Society Foundation. Â
