This summer’s series presents a retrospective of the collaborative film projects of Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige.Often blending history and fantasy, Hadjithomas and Joreige’s work captures the mood and contradictions of Lebanon in the post-war moment, and both their narrative and documentary work challenge the relationship between fact and fantasy and the writing of history. They use film to untangle representation from its referent, and their work engages the construction of memory from fragments.
In June, July, and August, Mizna will screen a curated selection of Hadjithomas and Joreige’s films, culminating in September with a filmmaker visit and discussion of their latest narrative feature Memory Box, which will open the sixteenth Twin Cities Arab Film Festival at the Walker Art Center.
This program is sponsored by The Senior Linkage Line.
Joana met the artist and poet Etel Adnan at the end of the 1990s. They quickly grew close, bound by links to a city they had never been to: Smyrna formerly, known today as Izmir. Joana’s paternal Greek family were forced into exile from Smyrna by the Turkish armies after the end of the Ottoman Empire. Etel’s Greek mother was born in Smyrna, married to a Syrian officer of the Ottoman Army and exiled to Lebanon after the fall of the empire. Etel and Joana lived in an imaginary Smyrna without ever setting foot there. They find themselves engaged in questions around the transmission of history, and interrogate their attachment to objects, places, and constructions of imaginaries without images. Their personal experiences and stories serve as a background to the region’s changes after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
- Year2016
- Runtime50 minutes
- LanguageFrench
- CountryLebanon
- DirectorJoana Hadjithomas, Khalil Joreige
- CastJoana Hadjithomas, Etel Adnan
This summer’s series presents a retrospective of the collaborative film projects of Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige.Often blending history and fantasy, Hadjithomas and Joreige’s work captures the mood and contradictions of Lebanon in the post-war moment, and both their narrative and documentary work challenge the relationship between fact and fantasy and the writing of history. They use film to untangle representation from its referent, and their work engages the construction of memory from fragments.
In June, July, and August, Mizna will screen a curated selection of Hadjithomas and Joreige’s films, culminating in September with a filmmaker visit and discussion of their latest narrative feature Memory Box, which will open the sixteenth Twin Cities Arab Film Festival at the Walker Art Center.
This program is sponsored by The Senior Linkage Line.
Joana met the artist and poet Etel Adnan at the end of the 1990s. They quickly grew close, bound by links to a city they had never been to: Smyrna formerly, known today as Izmir. Joana’s paternal Greek family were forced into exile from Smyrna by the Turkish armies after the end of the Ottoman Empire. Etel’s Greek mother was born in Smyrna, married to a Syrian officer of the Ottoman Army and exiled to Lebanon after the fall of the empire. Etel and Joana lived in an imaginary Smyrna without ever setting foot there. They find themselves engaged in questions around the transmission of history, and interrogate their attachment to objects, places, and constructions of imaginaries without images. Their personal experiences and stories serve as a background to the region’s changes after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
- Year2016
- Runtime50 minutes
- LanguageFrench
- CountryLebanon
- DirectorJoana Hadjithomas, Khalil Joreige
- CastJoana Hadjithomas, Etel Adnan