Gheith Al Amine, Mohammad Shawky, Audrey Ginestet
Friday, November 29, 2013, 7pm

 

In collaboration with EcransMed, articule is proud to present EM2.1: Screenings from the Mediterranean, a video programme comprinsing works by artists Gheith Al Amine, Mohammad Shawky, and Audrey Ginestet.

 

EcransMed is an annual short film festival featuring recently produced films from the Mediterranean. Screenings take place at indoor venues as well as public spaces in Montreal. EcransMed presents all screenings free of charge, allowing them to be accessible to a wide and varied audience. The festival has been inaugurated in December 2012, and is held annually, starting 2013, during the month of May.

 

Programme

Once Upon A Sidewalk, Gheith Al Amine, 20 m 42 s, Arabic, French and English with English subtitles, Lebanon, 2009.
It Was Related To Me, Mohammad Shawky, 17 m 34 s, Arabic with English subtitles, Egypt, 2011.
Spring Yes Yes Yes, Audrey Ginestet, 38 m, Japanese and French with English subtitles, France, 2012.

 

Description of videos

Once Upon a Sidewalk attempts to recreate the atmosphere and feelings of an encounter with a woman in the streets of Beirut. It consists of various re-stagings of this shot originally taken nine years earlier, each time conveying different meanings while also trying to emulate the mood and colors of that moment. This video explores issues of feminine self-perception and the representation of women as objects of desire and questions the medium of video itself by repeatedly manipulating it’s parameters.

It Was Related To Me is a meditation on the complex relationship of two brothers. Images from family albums and home videos are juxtaposed with sounds extracted from popular radio and television programs in the 1990s, unfolding this relationship and the interplay of notions of brotherhood, patronage, masculinity, and sexuality.

 

A man and a woman meet and fall in love in France. She is French and he is Japanese. The couple separate quickly, and a decade later, she goes to Japan in search of a final image of the lost love. The film is the story of a spacetime, an intimate reunion and farewell. With a subtlety of sound and images, Spring Yes Yes Yes is a testament to the creative power of cinema and life, which can be reborn, reincarnated and merged.

 

Artists

Gheith Al-Amine is a video artist, born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1973. He completed a BA and Maitrise in Video Art and Cinema at the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik (USEK). He wrote numerous specialized articles for several Arab cultural supplements like Zawaya, Nawafez and Al Akhbar on contemporary art in general and video art in particular. He produces and hosts a Jazz program,“Carrefour de Jazz” at the National Lebanese Radio (Radio Lebanon/Radio France International -R.F.I.- 96.2 FM). He’s currently putting the final touches on an old-new video installation project, and is elaborating an experimental documentary (video/photo-animation) about friendship, musical instruments and improvisation.

 

Mohammad Shawky is an Egyptian filmmaker, writer and producer. He holds a B.A. from the American University in Cairo (2004), and a graduate diploma in film directing from the Academy of Cinematic Arts in Cairo (2009). He was a Fulbright visiting scholar at Columbia University School of the Arts (2010-2011), where he made the short film It Was Related To Me. He has made a number of short films, including Alter World (2008) and On a Day like Today (2012). He is currently curating ArteEast’s film program and coordinating the Network of Arab Arthouse Screens (NAAS).

 

Audrey Ginestet holds a Master II of Research in Cinema Aesthetics and a Professional Master II in Sound Techniques from the School of Audiovisual Toulouse. She also holds a Master of Art Sociology from the University of Toulouse II - Le Mirail. In 2003, she was twice the winner of the Radio France prize "Hunters Sounds" and the following year she directed Dokonan, her first film documentary about a Japanese rock band on tour in the USA, which was released on DVD by the UL label. Since 2005, she has worked as both an operator and sound editor for various projects, documentaries, animated films, television series, radio, and live performance. She has just finished her second film: Spring Yes Yes Yes, and is currently preparing her next documentary web project AudioStories.