Ru’a (Visions)
Given the interest in contemporary culture from North Africa and the Middle East and the role of Barcelona as the Mediterranean cultural capital, MACBA presents a cinema cycle that is part of a larger project made in collaboration with OVNI (Observatory of Unidentified Cinema).
The screenings, meetings and ultimately the archive installation will be realised at MACBA and other points in the city. The blog (ru-a.org) is defined as a space of publication and diffusion, archive and virtual table for meeting and working.
The name Ru’a (الرؤى – Visions) indicates a current of extremely complex interrelations and cross-references where the Islamic – with all its cultural, anthropological and historical derivations – occupies common ground.
Project realised in collaboration with Toni Serra and OVNI
'The act of representing (and hence reducing) others, almost always involves violence of some sort to the subject of the representation.'
The Shadow of the West, Edward Said
The former catalytic and symbolic role that the metropolis played in the days of colonialism has been played since the mid-twentieth century by the mass media and the entertainment industry: consumer cinema and, more recently, video games. These media not only generate a homogenisation of certain levels of conscience, constructing a 'reality-news' that anaesthetises all critical sense, but also construct an imaginary that is monumental, homogenous and exclusive. Hence the importance, not only social and cultural but also personal, of constructing one's own imaginary, since it is reality itself that is at stake here.
All these works use video and text as an instrument of analysis, of critique, but also of introspection and exploration of intimacy. These are works that move freely between genres –video, essay, independent documentary– in order to understand the relations between individuals and the community, questions of gender, ethnocentricity, neo-colonialism, the phenomena of migration and media hostility.
We have included authors from different backgrounds: those who produce in their own country, those who have emigrated to Europe or America, and those who, coming from other contexts and countries, have decided to submerge themselves in that other culture.
Programme
Tuesday 30 April 2013, 19 pm
Restaurante Mediterráneo, c/ Hospital 101. Barcelona
El Hal [Trances]. Nass el Ghiwane
Ahmed El Maanouni. Morocco, 1981, 90'
El Hal presents concerts, talks and urban movements with the music group Nass El Ghiwane. In Morocco in the seventies, thanks to five buskers, there was an explosion of music that would become the expression of the desires, frustrations and rebellious spirit of the youth of the time. In Trances, Ahmed El Maanouni follows the geographical and cultural path of a group whose music is inspired by the last thousand years of Moroccan and African history. The film reveals the importance of this legacy. Through these songs they address social issues: from tea to speculation, from fire to suffering, from water to the hardness of the heart.
Wednesday 8 May 2013, 20 pm
MACBA Auditorium
Abu Ali, Herman Bashiron and Rosa Llop present the Ru'a (Visions) project before showing the film:
El Batalett – Femmes de la Medina
Dalila Ennadre. Morocco/France, 2002, 60'
In El Batalett, 'the heroines' of everyday life speak: the women of the medina in Casablanca. Within the walls of their homes in the old town, a community of Moroccan women cook, clean, take care of their families and help each other. These brave women, proud of their role, speak lucidly about their lives and know exactly what it would take to improve their lot: equal rights between men and women, and a better future for their children.
Wednesday 15 May 2013, 20 pm
MACBA Auditorium
The Dubai in Me – Rendering the World
Christian von Borries, Dubai/Germany, 2010, 78'
What are the working conditions in Dubai? Workers without rights, without passports, without a place to go when fired, meet in the old quarters. One tries to be sent home by drinking alcohol in public. Others believe that prison is the only place in Dubai where they are treated with dignity. The epilogue, shot in the greenhouses of Almeria and Melilla, highlights the similarities between places in the same global economic model. In this regard, Dubai is in all of us.
http://masseundmacht.com/
Ça sera beau [From Beirut with Love]
Waël Noureddine. Lebanon, 2005, 30'
The starting point is a city wounded by war: not only by the armed conflict, but by other parallel wars that may have come before. It is a journey through the scars of the city, its architecture and the people who inhabit it, but also through the scars of the body politic, memory and the drive to forget, the broken imaginary, dreams and narcotic desires.
http://www.al-barzaj.org/2011/06/broken-filmseng.html
http://www.lowave.com/fr/artistes/482-wael-noureddine-fr
http://www.ru-a.org/2011/04/beirut-presente-continuo.html
From Beirut to... those who love us
Electronic Lebanon. Lebanon, 2006, 6'
'Now listen to us. We are besieged, and the smell of explosions is in the air. Explosions, and the world watching… What matters is that we still have some water, food, dignity and love. We are here, where are you?'
A short video in the form of a postcard recorded on 21 July 2006 during the bombing of Beirut, denouncing the fact that it was seen as a media spectacle and failed to provoke any reaction from the international community. It grew out of a collaboration between Samidoun and Beirut DC (consisting of a group of filmmakers and people linked to art) to express the impact of violence.
http://electronicintifada.net/content/beirut-those-who-love-us-broadband-video/9582
This Smell of Sex
Danielle Arbid. Lebanon, 2008, 20'
This work by the Lebanese director Danielle Arbid has as its starting point a series of sexual experiences, obsessive and ardent, recounted freely and in great detail by friends of the director. The play of voices, men and women, who talk about their sexual secrets, combined with found images in Super 8 format and the darkness of the black screen, generates an atmosphere of erotic tension within the context of a poetic language.
www.franceculture.fr
MACBA Public Programs
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