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Featuring: Aykan Safoğlu, Simone Bitton, Elias Sanbar, Richard Dindo and Gelare Khoshgozaran
I Am From Here, I Am From There: Writers in Exile presents films that blend fiction and documentary practices in their profiles of writers living in exile. From Mahmoud Darwish to Jean Genet, the writers in these films are either onscreen presences or spectral conduits for reflecting on the heterogenous aspects of diasporic identity. Spanning from Lebanon to Los Angeles, the program generates several connective threads that transcend time and space, complicating rigid notions of national identity and venerating the potency of the written word as instrumental to a dialectic that’s fundamentally rooted in affirming human dignity.
I Am From Here, I Am From There: Writers in Exile is curated by Nick Kouhi and is co-presented by ArteEast and DCTV's Firehouse Cinema. This program is part of the legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, which preserves and presents over 20 years of film and video programming by ArteEast. A selection of the program will be presented in-person at DCTV's Firehouse Cinema, on July 29th starting 6:30 pm. The screening will be followed by a discussion between poet and scholar Sinan Antoon, and the curator Nick Kouhi. The full I Am From Here, I Am From There: Writers in Exile program will be available online on artearchive.org from July 19 - 30, 2025.
The Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish – born in Galilee in 1942 and died in exile in 2008 – is one of the great poets of the twentieth century. This film, completed in 1998, is part of the collection “A Century of Writers,” broadcasted on French public television as the year 2000 approached.
Mahmoud Darwich: as the Land Is the Language shares the emotion born from the words of Darwich, from his voice, and his inimitable poetic cadence – permitting the audience to access his work in its historic and cultural context. Darwich is filmed in the places in which he lived, his exiles, and his poems: airports, hotel rooms, apartments, and cafes. The film includes interviews in which he speaks about his work, and is interspersed with exceptional moments recorded over numerous recitals.
- Year1998
- Runtime60 minutes
- LanguageArabic, English
- CountryFrance
- PremiereFrance Public Television - Channel 3
- DirectorSimone Bitton, Elias Sanbar
- ScreenwriterSimone Bitton, Elias Sanbar
- ProducerPoint du Jour
- Executive ProducerChristian le Peutrec
- Co-ProducerFrance 3
- FilmmakerSimone Bitton
- EditorMireille Abramovici
- ComposerMarcel Khalife
- MusicMarcel Khalife
Featuring: Aykan Safoğlu, Simone Bitton, Elias Sanbar, Richard Dindo and Gelare Khoshgozaran
I Am From Here, I Am From There: Writers in Exile presents films that blend fiction and documentary practices in their profiles of writers living in exile. From Mahmoud Darwish to Jean Genet, the writers in these films are either onscreen presences or spectral conduits for reflecting on the heterogenous aspects of diasporic identity. Spanning from Lebanon to Los Angeles, the program generates several connective threads that transcend time and space, complicating rigid notions of national identity and venerating the potency of the written word as instrumental to a dialectic that’s fundamentally rooted in affirming human dignity.
I Am From Here, I Am From There: Writers in Exile is curated by Nick Kouhi and is co-presented by ArteEast and DCTV's Firehouse Cinema. This program is part of the legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, which preserves and presents over 20 years of film and video programming by ArteEast. A selection of the program will be presented in-person at DCTV's Firehouse Cinema, on July 29th starting 6:30 pm. The screening will be followed by a discussion between poet and scholar Sinan Antoon, and the curator Nick Kouhi. The full I Am From Here, I Am From There: Writers in Exile program will be available online on artearchive.org from July 19 - 30, 2025.
The Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish – born in Galilee in 1942 and died in exile in 2008 – is one of the great poets of the twentieth century. This film, completed in 1998, is part of the collection “A Century of Writers,” broadcasted on French public television as the year 2000 approached.
Mahmoud Darwich: as the Land Is the Language shares the emotion born from the words of Darwich, from his voice, and his inimitable poetic cadence – permitting the audience to access his work in its historic and cultural context. Darwich is filmed in the places in which he lived, his exiles, and his poems: airports, hotel rooms, apartments, and cafes. The film includes interviews in which he speaks about his work, and is interspersed with exceptional moments recorded over numerous recitals.
- Year1998
- Runtime60 minutes
- LanguageArabic, English
- CountryFrance
- PremiereFrance Public Television - Channel 3
- DirectorSimone Bitton, Elias Sanbar
- ScreenwriterSimone Bitton, Elias Sanbar
- ProducerPoint du Jour
- Executive ProducerChristian le Peutrec
- Co-ProducerFrance 3
- FilmmakerSimone Bitton
- EditorMireille Abramovici
- ComposerMarcel Khalife
- MusicMarcel Khalife