IN CINEMA

8th biennale /si:n/ in Palestine س ​: IN PRAISE OF A HIGH SHADOW
International Shorts Programs 1 & 2
Tickets: FREE (suggested donation $7-15)
Sunday, October 20th at 2PM

Based on a poem by Mahmoud Darwich, written in 1982 during the siege of Beirut, a poem written after the Sabra and Shatila massacre, read in Algeria in 1983 before the Palestinian National Council.

Inspired by the tri-continental, anti-imperialist solidarity movements of the 1960s and 80s, at the crossroads of militant, artistic and museological practices that created a very particular form of museum of solidarity, without walls, and more often than not, museums in exile (in support of the people of Chile, Nicaragua, South Africa and of course Palestine), the A.M. Qattan Foundation and Les Instants vidéo launched a call for solidarity. (* Past Disquiet, exhibition curated by Kristine Khouri and Rash Salti)

In 2024, the Palestinian video and performance art biennial /si:n/ (8th edition) is forced into exile. It will be hosted by the 37 edition of the Festival Les Instants Vidéo. The biennale will open on October, 20 in Marseille in Friche la Belle de Mai, made up of 2 Palestinian and 2 international video art programmes, a video installation and a panel discussion. But it will also be traveling the world, welcomed by other Museums of solidarity (for now, in Ethiopia, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Jordan, Lebanon, Canada, USA...).

The Biennial refuses to remain silent, or to be silenced. Nor will it abandon the territory where it was born. It will make a stopover in Ramallah, Jerusalem and Golan Heights.

The Biennial will not leave the stage. ACTION ! Let the images flow, let the pictures speak for themselves! The biennial will be written in the same way as a film, through editing. The images will invite spectators to get in motion to discover other territories. They will offer forms and spaces of resistance to erasure and invisibility.

And for a poetics of relation, we will cultivate the power of light towards artistic and cultural solidarity in the slightest spaces of the biennale.

Program 1:

Mohanad From Gaza
François Lejault, 2024, 7.5 min. France

Video portrait of Mohanad Adwan, a young musician, composer and performer who arrived from Gaza at the age of 15. Happy memories of childhood in a country at constant war, the suffering of exile, but also a creative energy striving towards a future that's always on hold.

Adentro y fuera 
Brigitte Valobra, 2023, 2 min. Spain

Don't remind me of the sea,
that the black pain springs forth
in the olive lands under the rustle of the leaves.

Damn them all
Silvia De Gennaro, 2024, 2 min. Italy

Because of a few arrogant leaders, humanity is risking destruction.

My whole heart with you
Essa Grayedm 2922, 9 min. Palestine.

My Whole Heart Is With You is an experimental video that features manipulated found- footage from one of the most renowned and tragic Arab speeches of the 20th century: the resignation speech of the Egyptian President, Gamal Abdel Nasser, during the 1967 defeat. The work juxtaposes moments of suspense and pauses between sentences in the speech, revealing how these moments of transition and relaxation have been transformed into moments of tension, anxiety, and anticipation when placed consecutively.

All the eyes
Pascal Lièvrem, 2024, 2 min. France

Every day I see these images pass by on social networks, I feel powerless, just a pair of eyes watching the flow of these images. Every image makes me feel bad: every day I feel bad.

The cry of silence 
Malubéa, 2024, 3:42 min. Belgium

After the elections of a totally amnesiac population.........! While despotic and bloodthirsty leaders weaken peoples through war and famine in Palestine, North Kivu, Sudan, Haiti, Afghanistan, Ukraine, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again...........!  For the Rohingyas, the Uyghurs, the Palestinians....................!  I've decided to make the EARTH bloom!!

L’Égée ou le trou du cul de la mort
Eleni Gioti, 2014, 7 min. Greece

A mysterious man appears at locations in Athens where racist attacks have taken place. Why is he giving life jacket instructions? Who is he trying to save from the anus of death? Since 2000 more than 23.000 people from Africa, the Middle East and beyond –war refugees, asylum seekers and economic migrants– have lost their lives while trying to cross the borders to Europe. Hundreds of them have drowned in the Aegean Sea. More and more often, migrants are pushed back to Turkey by Greek coast and border guards; their inflatable boats are rammed, knifed, and often capsized. Jazra Khaleed's poetry assault is set at five locations in Athens where racist attacks have been reported during the last three years. A film-poem jabbing at the current spread of ordinary fascism in Greece.

Nonexistence 
Firat Bingö, 2022, 2 min. Turkey

In the Nonexistence video, a hand appears on stage attempting to squeeze a stone. This squeezing action is a reflection of the individual's determination and effort despite facing challenges. The powerful squeezing gesture in the visual represents the effort to overcome seemingly impossible situations and individual achievement. The lack and helplessness resulting from social deprivation merge with the individual's struggle for existence.
The video addresses the individual's effort to create something out of nothing and the difficulties created by social deprivation. The individual is driven by an existential need and explores their relationship with their own existence. Actions like squeezing the stone or extracting its essence symbolize the individual's inner struggle and effort to overcome challenges. This visual narrative uses strong symbolism to depict a deep internal journey regarding the individual's own existence.

Ghost Dance
Emilia Izquierdo, 2019. UK

Using as base the 1894 filming of the Sioux American Indians dancing the ‘Ghost Dance’ the piece explores dance as protest, dance as a form of resistance against injustice and the imposition of foreign powers. Footage of the 1894 Sioux Indian Ghost dancing in resistance against the white settlers in North America and protest dances in other locations such as Gaza , South Africa, Peru, Jerusalem, Armenia among others. The footage and animations in Gaza are of people dancing the Dabke dance as a form of resistance against the rockets being thrown at them from across the border. The piece explores power, resistance and hope using hand drawn animation and archival footage exploring the power of cosmic, ancestral forces as sources of survival. Sound concept inspired by Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro 

TRT: 41’

Program 2:

3AM Birzeit
Joana Villaver, 9 min. Portugal

It is about 3 o’clock in the morning, December 8, 2015. I do not sleep. That I know, I learned that people do not sleep. Bangs are heard, I do not have an Internet, I do not have a telephone network, I do not know what the bangs are. Only the next morning, someone from the Walter Benjamin Conference in Palestine, talked about it , they also heard it. Israeli forces attacked a house nearby, very close, with tear gas.

Dignity and sense of ordinary things (peace) 
Przemyslaw Sanecki, 2024, 2:30 min. France/Poland

On the edge of the unknown, we preserve the dignity and meaning of ordinary things.

Your father was born 100 years old
Razan Al Salah, 7 min. Palestine/Liban/Canada

She looks down at her virtual ghost marked with an X. "If I were walking, I would have found it, even if it's not here anymore." Oum Amin, a Palestinian grandmother returns to her hometown Haifa through Google Maps Streetview, today, the only way she can see Palestine. She returns to a time and place collapsed to unravel her story, a herstory untold.

Sorrow 
Fran Orallo, 204, 2 min. Scotland

The work consists of a video glitch that shows a distorted body making dramatic movements. The project questions the idea of identity and identification with one's own body, showing a disjuncture when it comes to representation. The work is a metaphor that represents the violence exerted on a dissident body. The video is collected within the field of self-portrait since the body represented is the artist's own body.

It’s a lack of
Valérie LeBlanc & Daniel H. Dugas, 2024, 1:34 min. Canada

It’s a Lack of is a contemplation on the value placed on destroying people, their homes and their sense of well-being—the value of the military machine vis-à-vis the fragility of human existence.

In praise of the word
Lisi Prada, 2024, 2:30 min. Spain

A visual reading of the poem In praise of the word by Juan Carlos Mestre.

Dormeurs du Val 
Elsa Muller, 2018, 5:15 min. France

Freely inspired by Arthur Rimbaud's poem Le dormeur du Val. Lying on sand or grass, virtual silhouettes follow one another in turn. In the near distance, birds sing, a dog barks, cars drive by.

Souviens-toi 
Juan Desteract, 2022, 1:30 min.France/Argentina

The persistence of a fateful image and the need to hold on to it imply the doubling of a memory. The memory is thus suspended between multiple versions of the same event, between representations of a past and a present already lived, between figuration and abstraction, between movement and immobility, at the crossroads between the still image and the moving image. Intrusive impressions of other lives are superimposed on the memory, exposing us to a surveilled reality where we wonder who sees and what we see.

My grandfather crossed from Palestine with a horse…
Sarah Beddington, 2017/2024, 3 min. UK

The heron-like Bennu bird of Egyptian mythology flew across the earth before time existed. Its cry broke through the primeval silence, creating light from infinite darkness. Here, its hoarse cry is lamenting the longstanding tragedy of the Eastern Mediterranean region. The film is a reflection on the southern Lebanese border, a line first drawn by the western powers during World War I, and incorporates aerial images of Palestine taken by the British in the early 20th century, when the fate of the area could have taken a very different direction.

The aerial perspective also refers to the journeys of millions of migratory birds whose ancient, cyclical journeys counter the human divisions on the ground, connecting the Palestinian people in exile in a refugee camp in Lebanon to the historic homeland with which they identify. Seventy six years after their families were forced to flee north across this border, they and their descendants are still waiting to return.

Lettre ouverte à toi Palestine 
Sarah Violaine, 2024, 3:42 min. France

Lettre ouverte à toi Palestine (Open Letter to you Palestine) is a letter written by the artist after her return from Palestine, after her participation in the 7th edition of the /si:n/ festival in 2022 with Instants Vidéo. Written spontaneously and still under the influence of the emotions of the trip that lasted just 72 hours, including 24 hours on Palestinian soil. This encounter had a profound impact on the artist's approach to performance art and her perception of the world. This is a tribute to the human encounters that were particularly powerful…

TRT: 38’

Sound Installation (on loop)
Behind the Horizon
Toni Mestrovic, 2024, 2 min. Croatia

The video image shows a view towards the horizon from the Limassol promenade. The seemingly beautiful scene does not reveal what lies behind. The sound depicts pro- Palestinian demonstrations in Limassol, Cyprus, 375 kilometers away from Gaza, which is situated behind the horizon. Hidden from sight, as if nothing is happening, the Western world remains silent.

/si:n/ video art and performance biennale was co-founded in 2009 by A.M. Qattan Foundation and Les Instants Vidéo, supported by a group of cultural organizations in Palestine. First event of this kind in Palestine, the biennale travels to several cities (Ramallah, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Gaza...) and presents Palestinian and international art works.