This video considers how Lebanese photographer Hashem el Madani captured the everyday movement of crowds, friends and family with his super 8 camera. The rushes used in the five movements of this work were shot in the late 1960s and early 1970s in tourist attractions of Egypt and Lebanon. These sites include the Beiteddine Palace, Kfarhonah, a picnic site in a pine forest in Dahr el Ramleh, and Jezzine, Madani's summer residence.
Akram Zaatari is an artist who lives and works in Beirut. He has been exploring Lebanon's postwar condition through collecting testimonies and various documents, notably on the mediation of territorial conflicts and wars through television, and the logic of Resistance in the context of the current geographical division of the Middle East.
Co-founder of the Arab Image Foundation (Beirut), he based his recent work on collecting, studying, and archiving a particular collection on the Middle East, notably studying the work of Lebanese photographer Hashem el Madani (1928-) as a register of social relationships and of photographic practices.
In addition to his work as an artist, Zaatari is also the curator of the Radical Closure box set, which includes his work In This House.
Grand winner of the 17th International Contemporary Art Festival SESC_Videobrasil.
Represented in the Lebanese Pavilion at the 55th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.