The first part of this screening will be devoted to recent works by French-Moroccan video-artist Bouchra Kalili. Works, which have been described as “a subtle revelation of the situations and tensions that territory, borders, and the urban space provoke in our subjectivities” These video include ‘Aerial View’, an overhead journey above an unspecified major western city. In it, we see a large television screen that projects advertising images within public spaces, a heavily urbanized architecture, an occupied coast. At the same time, voices evoke meetings, failed or still to come, cinema as utopia and “the world as the will to represent”. Meanwhile Kalili’s ‘Straight Stories-Part 1’, is the initial section of a video triptych about wanderings in border zones, where physical and imaginary geographies become indistinguishable. In addition to producing her own works Bouchra Kalil is a member of The Board of Directors of the Cinémathèque de Tanger, which opened in December 2006, and the Co-Programmer of this young artist-run, non-profit organization. It is therefore fitting that the second half of this screening event will spotlight ‘fragments’ from the Cinématèque, which houses a unique archive of Arab shorts movies, documentaries, video art, and vernacular film work. All of them deal with daily life, Moroccan soil as a heterogeneous space, and contemporary issues such as displacement. Among the offerings are: ‘Tangier: Vues du Grand Socco et du Petit Socco’, a 1935 movie by Gabriel Veyre that encompasses the first moving, color pictures shot in the City of Tangier; Abu Ali’s experimental short ‘Wahab’ (1994), tracking the wandering of a plastic bag in a Tangier street; ‘Moroccan girl in two-dimensions’ by Brahim Bachiri, in which 70 questions are projected against a backdrop, one after the other, to incite the audience to take part in a debate about the calamities blighting our world (hatred, war, pollution, famine, sickness, etc); ‘The Train’ by Brahim Fritah relates an unforgettable encounter between Giuseppe, a young law student, and Ahmed, an elderly man who’s just been released from prison. For further information about the Cinémathèque de Tanger: www.cinemathequedetanger.com
Bouchra Khalili is a French-Moroccan video-artist working on the frontier of cinema and the visual arts. Her videos deal with displacement, relations and distances between physical and imaginary geographies. They have been shown at numerous international exhibitions, biennials, and festivals. She’s also member of The Board of Directors of the Cinémathèque de Tanger, and the co-programmer of this non-profit organization run by young artists.