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RESOUNDING LANDSCAPES, curated by Nour Helou, brings together short films by Arab filmmakers who center songs in their cinematic offerings.
In our songs were ready for all wars to come, Noor Abed investigates the critical and representational potential of Palestinian historical communal folktales and songs to rewrite reality as we know it; in A Song to My Brothers, Sirine Fattouh stages six women to subvert Lebanon’s national anthem—striking back at patriarchal and nationalist authority; in Hussein Nassereddine's A King Made of Nothing, voices and images are collected across generations to reflect on mortality and poetic memory of Arab singers; and in Capital, Basma al-Sharif critiques the rise of architectural neo-colonial violence in Egypt via a re and mis - translation of a French song.
our songs were ready for all wars to come by Nour Abed
Choreographed scenes based on documented folktales from Palestine, the film aims to create a new aesthetic form to re-awaken latent stories based around water wells and their connection to communal rituals around notions of disappearance, mourning, and death. The film examines the critical stance of ‘folklore’ as a source of knowledge, and its possible connection to alternative social and representational models in Palestine. How can ‘folklore’ become a common emancipatory tool for people to overturn dominant discourses, reclaim their history and land, and rewrite reality as they know it?
The only narration in the film is a song, which is sung by Palestinian singer Maya Khaldi. Its lyrics are a collage of different folk tales. Captured through mediums of film and sound, situated stories are archived and represented, creating a context that explores the capacity of social formation, and the possibility of recalling a memory that is capable of decentralizing images of fixity; a memory that is liberated from monuments.
About the Filmmaker:
Noor Abed is a Palestinian artist who works at the intersection of performance and film, combining forms of the ‘staged’ and the ‘documentary’. Her practice examines notions of social choreographies and collective formations, searching through the connection between the notion of ‘synchrony’ and social action. Abed attended the Whitney Independent Study Program in Νew York in 2015-16, and the Home Workspace Program (HWP) at Ashkal Alwan, Beirut 2016-17. In 2020, she co-founded, with Lara Khaldi, the School of Intrusions, an independent educational collective in Ramallah, Palestine. Abed was an assistant curator in documenta fifteen, Kassel 2021-22, an artist in residence at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam 2022-24. She was awarded the Han Nefkens Foundation/ Museu Tàpies Film Production Grant in 2022, and her film 'A Night We Held Between' was selected as a first-prize winner of the e-flux Film Award 2024. Her book 'Stars at Midday' was published by Occasional Papers in October 2024.
- Year2021
- Runtime20 minutes
- LanguageArabic
- CountryPalestine, State of
- Subtitle LanguageArabic
- DirectorNoor Abed
- CinematographerHamoudi Trad
- ComposerDirar Kalash
RESOUNDING LANDSCAPES, curated by Nour Helou, brings together short films by Arab filmmakers who center songs in their cinematic offerings.
In our songs were ready for all wars to come, Noor Abed investigates the critical and representational potential of Palestinian historical communal folktales and songs to rewrite reality as we know it; in A Song to My Brothers, Sirine Fattouh stages six women to subvert Lebanon’s national anthem—striking back at patriarchal and nationalist authority; in Hussein Nassereddine's A King Made of Nothing, voices and images are collected across generations to reflect on mortality and poetic memory of Arab singers; and in Capital, Basma al-Sharif critiques the rise of architectural neo-colonial violence in Egypt via a re and mis - translation of a French song.
our songs were ready for all wars to come by Nour Abed
Choreographed scenes based on documented folktales from Palestine, the film aims to create a new aesthetic form to re-awaken latent stories based around water wells and their connection to communal rituals around notions of disappearance, mourning, and death. The film examines the critical stance of ‘folklore’ as a source of knowledge, and its possible connection to alternative social and representational models in Palestine. How can ‘folklore’ become a common emancipatory tool for people to overturn dominant discourses, reclaim their history and land, and rewrite reality as they know it?
The only narration in the film is a song, which is sung by Palestinian singer Maya Khaldi. Its lyrics are a collage of different folk tales. Captured through mediums of film and sound, situated stories are archived and represented, creating a context that explores the capacity of social formation, and the possibility of recalling a memory that is capable of decentralizing images of fixity; a memory that is liberated from monuments.
About the Filmmaker:
Noor Abed is a Palestinian artist who works at the intersection of performance and film, combining forms of the ‘staged’ and the ‘documentary’. Her practice examines notions of social choreographies and collective formations, searching through the connection between the notion of ‘synchrony’ and social action. Abed attended the Whitney Independent Study Program in Νew York in 2015-16, and the Home Workspace Program (HWP) at Ashkal Alwan, Beirut 2016-17. In 2020, she co-founded, with Lara Khaldi, the School of Intrusions, an independent educational collective in Ramallah, Palestine. Abed was an assistant curator in documenta fifteen, Kassel 2021-22, an artist in residence at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam 2022-24. She was awarded the Han Nefkens Foundation/ Museu Tàpies Film Production Grant in 2022, and her film 'A Night We Held Between' was selected as a first-prize winner of the e-flux Film Award 2024. Her book 'Stars at Midday' was published by Occasional Papers in October 2024.
- Year2021
- Runtime20 minutes
- LanguageArabic
- CountryPalestine, State of
- Subtitle LanguageArabic
- DirectorNoor Abed
- CinematographerHamoudi Trad
- ComposerDirar Kalash