Like You’ve Never Been There: Cinema & the Memory of Cities

LIKE YOU’VE NEVER BEEN THERE: Cinema and the Memory of Cities

June 9-12, from 5pm until late (iftar will be served)

A Program of Film Screenings,Discussions, and Conversations around Cities, Film, Counter-Narratives, and Subjectivity

Created with Rasha Salti

This program of film screenings and conversations explores how independent, low-budget, hybrid and personal cinema from the past two decades has produced representations and narratives that rewrite the histories and lived experience of cities. In this selection of films curated by Rasha Salti, the artists and filmmakers use the medium of film and the language of personal, hybrid and sometimes experimental cinema, to produce an image of that which is excluded from visibility. In blending institutional and private family archives, speaking in the first person or creating a stage for the voice of those not usually heard, foregrounding the fictional power of documentary and lacing it with fiction, from these films surface counter-narratives, sometimes inhibited and other times prohibited, sometimes neglected, ignored or simply forgotten. The film screenings are followed by conversations with filmmakers, architects and historians.

Participating speakers and discussants:
Mona Assaad, independent filmmaker, Neighbors / Giran
Sarah Francis, independent filmmaker, Birds of September / Tuyur Ayloul
Omnia Khalil, participatory planner, urban anthropologist, and doctoral candidate in Anthropology, Graduate Center of the City University of New York
Arya Lalloo, independent filmmaker, Jeppe on a Friday
Khaled Malas, architect and doctoral candidate in the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
Mpho Matsipa, architect, researcher at the University of Witwatersrand, and Adjunct Assistant Professor and Curator of Studio-X Johannesburg at Columbia GSAPP
Elis Mendoza, architect, researcher, activist, and doctoral candidate in Architecture History and Theory at Princeton University
Rasha Salti, independent film and visual arts curator and writer

Selection of films:
Sans Cinema (Bla Cinema) by Lamine Ammar-Khodja (Algeria/France, 2014)
Jeppe on a Friday by Shannon Walsh and Arya Lalloo (South Africa, 2013)
Cheonggyecheon Medley: A Dream of Iron by Kelvin Kyung Kun Park (South Korea/USA, 2010)
Birds of September (Tuyur Ayloul) by Sarah Francis (Lebanon/Qatar, 2013)
Neighbors (Giran) by Tahani Rashed and Mona Assaad (Egypt, 2009)
My Heart Beats Only For Her (Ma Hataftu Li Ghayriha) by Mohamed Soueid (Lebanon, 2008)
A World Not Ours (’Alam Layssa Lana) by Mahdi Fleifel (Palestine/Denmark, 2012)

Day 1 - schedule: June 9, 2016, King Ghazi Hotel, downtown Amman

5pm - 5:15pm: Opening remarks by Nora Akawi and Rasha Salti

5:15pm - 7:45pm: Screening Sans Cinema (Bla Cinema) by Lamine Ammar-Khodja (Algeria/France, 2014) followed by a response by Rasha Salti

7:45pm - 9:00pm: iftar

9:00pm - 11:30pm: Screening Jeppe on a Friday by Shannon Walsh and Arya Lalloo (South Africa, 2013) followed by a conversation with Mpho Matsipa and Arya Lalloo