NATURE MORTE

TABIAAH SAMITAH

of ZAATARI Akram

FRANCE, 2008, 00:11:00

Production : ZAATARI Akram
Genre : Video art
Keyword : Allegory, War, The Middle East, Society, Violence

Summary :
This is a recording of a silent moment, in which 2 men prepare themselves for a military action. While the older one leaves in the end, weapon to his shoulder, the younger one decides to stay. In this video, Zaatari works with a former member of the Lebanese Resistance, Mohammad Abu Hammane, who was featured 11 years ago in his video "All is well on the border" (1997). His reappearance in this work is a transposition in time that evokes the awakening of an older resistant, now revisiting his military gear. This video was shot in Hubbariyeh, a Lebanese village located in the Aarqub area in South Lebanon, where the fidaeyin (Palestinian resistant fighters) based themselves in Lebanon in the late 1960s. The village is only few kilometers away from the Israeli-occupied Shebaa farms, still disputed between Lebanon, and Israel.

Filmed in Mohamad Abu Hammane’s house in Hubbariyeh in December 2007.
Produced for the Exhibition “Les Inquiets”. Feb13 - May19 2008
Centre National d’art Moderne Georges Pompidou. Paris.


“Two men sit in the blue light of dawn. One is old and wizened. The other is young and baby-faced. As the old man makes explosives, the young man carefully mends the frayed cuff of a jacket. Which man will carry out the implied operation? What is the relationship between them and why does it seem so tender?”
(Kaelen Wilson-Goldie for Oberhausen Kurzfilmtage catalogue 2008)

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