Erased,__Ascent of the Invisible
+ Lebanon in Focus
Saturday, 9/28
5:45 p.m.
Buy tickets >>>
Erased,_Ascent of the Invisible
طرس، رحلة الصعود إلى المرئي
Ghassan Halwani
Documentary feature
76 mins | 2018
Lebanon
Arabic with English Subtitles
Minnesota premiere
Thirty-five years ago, I witnessed the kidnapping of a man I know. He has disappeared since. Ten years ago, I caught a glimpse of his face while walking in the street, but I wasn’t sure it was him. Parts of his face were torn off, but his features had remained unchanged since the incident. Yet something was different, as if he wasn’t the same man.
Ghassan Halwani’s debut feature film uses documentary footage, animation, and performance to ruminate on the thousands of people who disappeared during the Lebanese Civil War.
Festivals and Awards:
Signs of Life section, Locarno International Film Festival, Switzerland, 2018
Toronto International Film Festival, Canada, 2018
Cairo International Film Festival, Egypt, 2018
FICUNAM International Cinema Festival, Mexico, 2018
Ghassan Halwani lives and works in Beirut. After his short animated film Jibraltar (2005), he was mainly involved in collaborations with Lebanese and other Arab filmmakers and artists. He directed a short animated closing segment of the documentary Lebanese Rocket Society (2012) by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige. Erase,__Ascent of the Invisible is his first feature-length documentary. He is currently contributing to the creation of a national archive of enforced disappearances in Lebanon.
*****
Of Yellow Was the Outer Sky
Hisham Bizri
Short
8 mins | 2018
Production: Lebanon
Focus: Syria
No Dialogue
US premiere
Attention: Mature content.
Of Yellow Was the Outer Sky is an ode to the fragility of life and the Syrian revolution which started on March 15, 2011.
Hisham Bizri is a filmmaker born in Beirut, Lebanon. He started working in films in the US and Hungary with filmmakers Stan Brakhage, Raoul Ruiz, and Miklós Jancsó, and has directed twenty-eight short films and written several feature films. Bizri’s films have shown at Sundance, Cannes, Berlin, Oberhausen, Moscow, and the Anthology Film Archives, and been featured over the years at Mizna’s Arab Film Fest. He has won the Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and the American Academy Rome Prize.
