*Photo from the movie Light Horizon of Randa Maddah

Goethe-Institut Thessaloniki, the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography and the project Realise co-organised by ArtBOX present In the heart of the heart of another country*, a collaborative project organised by AIN (Paris-Damascus-Beirut), Mansion (Beirut) and TWIXTlab (Athens).

The general program includes films, documentaries, talks and exhibitions and varies in each city where it takes place – Athens (3-6 June), Thessaloniki (15 June), and Beirut (19-25 September).

The project is presented in Thessaloniki in the context of REALISE – The Resilience of Art in Public Spaces, organised by Heinrich Boell Foundation Brandenburg in partnership with ArtBOX Creative Arts Management and four other organisations from around Europe with the support of the Creative Europe program of the EU.

Also, it is held in the framework of the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography’s Crossroads talks program, where the guests discuss the connection between image and a specific theme. The upcoming event addresses the relationship between image and the crisis in Syria, Greece and Lebanon, and is the first parallel event in the context of the photo exhibition “Another Life: Human flows / Unknown Odysseys”.

The program in Thessaloniki includes screenings and a discussion on the current situation. Artists, activists and researchers will share and exchange thoughts, methods and skills to analyse, intervene and create new perspectives within the radical current socio-political transformations the three countries are facing. Ideally, the project will be the first step towards a long-term collaborative platform.

* The title was borrowed from Etel Adnan’s poetry book of the same title, published in 2005. Adnan is an accomplished Lebanese-American poet, essayist and visual artist, whose work has never shied away from facing up to the tragedies of modern history. Born in 1925, Adnan was raised in Beirut; her mother was Greek from Smyrna and her father Syrian from Damascus. She spends her time between Paris, Beirut and California.

PROGRAMME

18:00-18:30: SCREENINGS

Randa Maddah, Light Horizon, 2012, video, 7’22
Syria, lives in Majdal al Beik
Silent

Shot in the destroyed village of Ain Fit in the occupied Syrian Golan, where a woman meticulously tidies up a room in a ruined house. Maddah’s film poetically attempts to capture an individual’s efforts of creating intimacy and familiarity in a violent territory filled with tragedy and destruction.

Ammar al Beik, The Sun’s Incubator, 2011, documentary-fiction, 12′
Syria, lives in Berlin
Arabic and French with Greek subtitles

Feb. 4th, 2011: The family is getting ready to demonstrate. The crowds go wild and scream: “We want to bring down the dictatorship of Mubarak who humiliated Egyptians during the past three decades”.
May 27, 2011: Thirteen-year old Syrian boy Hamza al-Khateeb is shot and tortured to death in Dera’a. The Syrian streets rise up.
The film is a reflection on life, death and political commitment.

18:30-19:30: Round Table: “Approaches of Displacement”
English and Greek with live interpretation

The participants will approach different perspectives of crisis, migration and exile through the lens of representation.

Sofia Grigoriadou, artist and co-founder of TwixtLab / Greece

Delphine Leccas, curator and co-founder of AIN / France-Lebanon-Syria

Io Myrto Chaviara, artist and co-founder of TwixtLab / Greece

Eleni Hodolidou, Associate Professor, AUTh, Coordinator of the programme for educational intervention for the refugee camps in Diavata and the Port of Thessaloniki

Andreas Takis, Assistant Professor in Philosophy & Methodology of Law, Law Faculty, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

SCREENINGS: 20:00-23:30

Tracing Movements, Patras Dead End, 2015, documentary, 33’12
Greece, lives in Greece-UK-France
Greek and English with English and Greek subtitles

Patras is one of Greece’s main ports on the Adriatic Sea, a few hundred kilometres West is the Italian coast. For the last 15 years, migrants have come to Patras because it is an exit gate, the last port of call for those hoping to carry on their journey to Western Europe. The film follows those who survive everyday life in Patras, who look back at the times when migrants made public demands, and wonder what the future holds.

Tracing Movements is a collaborative film project, documenting collective and political resistance against a Europe that tirelessly attempts to filter and control the movement of people across and within its borders. Laura Maragoudaki is a visual artist and filmmaker based in Athens; Sylvie Plannel is a researcher, filmmaker and grassroots farmer based in the United Kingdom; and Matthieu Quillet is an independent documentary filmmaker based in the South of France.

Khaled Soliman al-Nassiry, Antonio Augugliaro and Gabriele Del Grande, On the bride’s side, 2014, documentary-fiction, 98′
Syria-Palestine-Italy, live in Milan
Arabic and Italian with English and Greek subtitles

A Palestinian poet and an Italian journalist in Milan meet five Palestinians and Syrians who entered Europe after fleeing the war in Syria. They decide to help them complete their journey to Sweden –and hopefully avoid getting themselves arrested as traffickers– by faking a wedding. This emotionally charged journey not only brings out stories of hopes and dreams, but also reveals an unknown side of Europe – a transnational, supportive and irreverent Europe that ridicules laws and restrictions of the Fortress in masquerade.

Ziad Kalthoum, The Immortal Sergeant, documentary-fiction, 2013, 72′
Syria-Germany, lives in Berlin
Arabic with English and Greek subtitles

Shot in the heart of Damascus during the beginning of the revolution, the movie captures daily Damascene life. While the filmmaker is completing his mandatory military service in the Syrian army, he goes back to his home, where he sheds his military uniform and returns to his civilian life, working as an assistant director to filmmaker Mohammed Malas. To make sense of this schizophrenic situation, he decides to take his camera and starts shooting a ‘making-of’ that will eventually go beyond Malas’ film.

INFO

In the heart of the heart of another country
15 June 2016, 18:00-23:30
Thessaloniki Museum of Photography
Port of Thessaloniki, Pier A, Warehouse A

Presented in Thessaloniki by
Goethe-Institut Thessaloniki
Thessaloniki Museum of Photography
Realise project co-organised by ArtBOX Creative Arts Management

Organised by
AIN (Paris, FR / Damascus, SY / Beirut, LE)
TWIXTLab (Athens, GR)
Mansion (Beirut, LE)

REALISE partners
Heinrich Boell Foundation Brandenburg (Postdam, DE)
ArtBOX (Thessaloniki, GR)
NEXT – Verein für zeitgenössische Kunst (Graz, AU)
ZEMOS98 (Seville, ES)
Croatian Association of Artists (HDLU) (Zagreb, HR)
With the support of the Creative Europe programme of the EU
www.realiseproject.eu

In the heart of the heart of another country
Screenings, exhibition and round tables
Athens – Thessaloniki – Beirut

Thessaloniki Museum of Photography
15 June 2016, 18:00-23:30

Entrance Free

Due to limited seating available,
attendance will take place on a first-come-first-served basis.