This block of short films showcases the necessity and beauty of telling our story through documentaries. Each of these films focuses on learning from the past to inform our future. Whether we're uncovering trauma from war, discovering a family's ethnic identity, or inserting Arab world history that is often omitted from history books, these short films share powerful narratives that deserve to be told and shared with the world.
"1001 Arab Futures" is an intimate outdoor site-specific dance performance and visual installation contemplating imaginative visions, past reckonings, embodied truths and other future potentials from the Arab diaspora.
About The Filmmakers
Choreographers/Movement Directors:
Yara Boustany is a performer and choreographer born in Ghbeleh, Lebanon. Her interdisciplinary work searches for potential sensorial stimuli that can direct humans to unexplored territories of existence - she looks for enchantment and disturbance. She has toured with her shows throughout Lebanon, and also Stuttgart, Ankara, Warsaw, London, Manchester, Liverpool, Chalon sur Saône and Athens. She is also the founder and director of Amalgam Studio in Beirut, Lebanon.
Yara's Website: https://uirii.com
Andrea Shaker grew up in a small town in Connecticut on Quiripi lands. After earning her BA from Georgetown University and MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she moved to Dakota and Anishinaabe lands, where she is a professor of art at the College of St. Benedict | St. John’s University. Andrea’s creative work is interdisciplinary, spanning photography, moving image, experimental film, and written and spoken word. As an Arab American, she explores the spaces between home & homeland and migration & diaspora. Through image and word, her work addresses how these spaces, and the movement of the body within these spaces, are imagined and experienced through the physiology of intergenerational memory.
Andrea's Website: https://andreashaker.com
Mette Loulou von Kohl was born from the orange at the center before the new world came. She is a wanderer, performer and educator. Currently living on unceded Lenni Lenape land, now colonized as New York City. Mette Loulou is a queer femme, of Lebanese/Palestinian and Danish ancestry. She has lived in New York, Romania, Morocco, Denmark and England. Mette Loulou is fascinated by the intersection between her personal identities as a jumping off point to reveal, dismantle and rebuild realities and dreams. She grapples with her past to complicate and better understand her present. Mette Loulou weaves movement and words into the exploration of her embodied histories. She exists in two places at once.
Mette's Website: http://www.metteloulouvonkohl.com
Concept/Creative Contributions/Performance:
Sharon Mansur is a dance and interdisciplinary experimental artist, educator, curator, and community mover and shaker of Lebanese heritage based in Keoxa/Winona, Mni Sota Makoce/MN,
Dakota land. Her creative practices weave movement making, improvisation, visual environments, food, screendance, audience participation and site-situated/responsive art to offer multi-sensory and immersive experiences rooted in body, imagination, and environment. She loves creating artistic opportunities for people from all walks of life to connect and engage. Sharon has recently received support from the McKnight Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council, the Winona Fine Arts Commission and Springboard for the Arts. Sharon is the director of The Cedar Tree Project, presenting and amplifying regional, national and international creative voices of the SWANA/Arab diaspora.
Sharon's Website: www.cedartreeproject.com
- Year2021
- Runtime7 minutes
- LanguageEnglish
- CountryUnited States
- DirectorSharon Mansur, with Yara Boustany, Andrea Shaker, Mette Loulou von Kohl
- CinematographerSydney Swanson
- Sound Designwoolen lover
This block of short films showcases the necessity and beauty of telling our story through documentaries. Each of these films focuses on learning from the past to inform our future. Whether we're uncovering trauma from war, discovering a family's ethnic identity, or inserting Arab world history that is often omitted from history books, these short films share powerful narratives that deserve to be told and shared with the world.
"1001 Arab Futures" is an intimate outdoor site-specific dance performance and visual installation contemplating imaginative visions, past reckonings, embodied truths and other future potentials from the Arab diaspora.
About The Filmmakers
Choreographers/Movement Directors:
Yara Boustany is a performer and choreographer born in Ghbeleh, Lebanon. Her interdisciplinary work searches for potential sensorial stimuli that can direct humans to unexplored territories of existence - she looks for enchantment and disturbance. She has toured with her shows throughout Lebanon, and also Stuttgart, Ankara, Warsaw, London, Manchester, Liverpool, Chalon sur Saône and Athens. She is also the founder and director of Amalgam Studio in Beirut, Lebanon.
Yara's Website: https://uirii.com
Andrea Shaker grew up in a small town in Connecticut on Quiripi lands. After earning her BA from Georgetown University and MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she moved to Dakota and Anishinaabe lands, where she is a professor of art at the College of St. Benedict | St. John’s University. Andrea’s creative work is interdisciplinary, spanning photography, moving image, experimental film, and written and spoken word. As an Arab American, she explores the spaces between home & homeland and migration & diaspora. Through image and word, her work addresses how these spaces, and the movement of the body within these spaces, are imagined and experienced through the physiology of intergenerational memory.
Andrea's Website: https://andreashaker.com
Mette Loulou von Kohl was born from the orange at the center before the new world came. She is a wanderer, performer and educator. Currently living on unceded Lenni Lenape land, now colonized as New York City. Mette Loulou is a queer femme, of Lebanese/Palestinian and Danish ancestry. She has lived in New York, Romania, Morocco, Denmark and England. Mette Loulou is fascinated by the intersection between her personal identities as a jumping off point to reveal, dismantle and rebuild realities and dreams. She grapples with her past to complicate and better understand her present. Mette Loulou weaves movement and words into the exploration of her embodied histories. She exists in two places at once.
Mette's Website: http://www.metteloulouvonkohl.com
Concept/Creative Contributions/Performance:
Sharon Mansur is a dance and interdisciplinary experimental artist, educator, curator, and community mover and shaker of Lebanese heritage based in Keoxa/Winona, Mni Sota Makoce/MN,
Dakota land. Her creative practices weave movement making, improvisation, visual environments, food, screendance, audience participation and site-situated/responsive art to offer multi-sensory and immersive experiences rooted in body, imagination, and environment. She loves creating artistic opportunities for people from all walks of life to connect and engage. Sharon has recently received support from the McKnight Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council, the Winona Fine Arts Commission and Springboard for the Arts. Sharon is the director of The Cedar Tree Project, presenting and amplifying regional, national and international creative voices of the SWANA/Arab diaspora.
Sharon's Website: www.cedartreeproject.com
- Year2021
- Runtime7 minutes
- LanguageEnglish
- CountryUnited States
- DirectorSharon Mansur, with Yara Boustany, Andrea Shaker, Mette Loulou von Kohl
- CinematographerSydney Swanson
- Sound Designwoolen lover