Morsi Mubarak

Popularly Elected Apartheid

With Our Ideas, We Take Our Portrait: Reflections on the Work of Alessandra Sanguinetti

In this collection of essays, three young Palestinian photographers and refugees respond to the work of Alessandra Sanguinetti, an Argentinian-American photographer who visited Palestine twice during the second Intifada. Mohammad Al-Azza, Yasmeen Saleem, and Areej Asad were children when Sanguinetti took some of her photographs in their community. Years later, they found these photographs personally and politically resonant. Sanguinetti documented the aftermath of military violence, but she also captured quiet moments of reflection. These writers gravitated to the latter images. For more about the photography project, “With Our Ideas, We Take Our Portrait,” read Amahl ...

Regarding the Torture of Others in "Zero Dark Thirty"

Much of the hype and controversy surrounding Zero Dark Thirty centers on the issue of torture. The acting director of the CIA as well as three US senators have criticized the film for exaggerating the role of “enhanced interrogation techniques” in the search for Osama bin Laden, while commentators have criticized the film for advocating torture, some going so far as to call the film’s director, Kathryn Bigelow, an “apologist for evil.” Cinematographically, the film has received rave reviews, garnering five academy award nominations, among them best picture and best actress for Jessica Chastain’s depiction of CIA agent Maya. Yet what is at stake when the torture of ...

Mohamed Majd

The great Moroccan actor Mohamed Majd passed away last Thursday, at the age of seventy-three, at a clinic in Casablanca. He was admitted the week before for respiratory problems, following a short stay in Dubai to promote Noureddine Lakhmari’s latest feature Zero (2012). Majd plays one of the lead roles in this film about police corruption, social exclusion, and an anti-hero's redemption through love found in the film-noirish streets of downtown Casablanca. The renowned actor was laid to rest in Casablanca, where he was born in 1940. His death follows the recent loss of many figures of Moroccan cinema's first generation of directors (Ahmed Bouanani), actors (Hassan ...

Amir Tag Elsir: Ebola '76

A Chapter from Amir Tag Elsir’s  Ebola ‘76 Translated from the Arabic by Maia Tabet   In times of Tragedy, Things seem real. Eyes are real. The hand that greets a neighbor is real, And the moon is real, not just a fantasy in the distance. My sweetheart asks me about the meaning of reality, I refer her question to Tragedy, Passers-by ask me about the meaning of real blood. It is that which is sown by Tragedy, I say.  Cautionary Note In August 1976, the deadly Ebola virus struck several areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as the border town of Nzara in South Sudan. The virus, which causes a severe haemorraghic fever, is ...

Homage to Leonardo

Leonardo Da Vinci first impressed me when one of my art history professors, while earning my MFA at Indiana University in 1963, described a certain spot in the room of “The Last Supper” as the ideal place for a viewer to stand. He explained that this was Leonardo’s visualization of the Renaissance concept of man as the center. This room at Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan had not been intended as the monk’s dining hall but was converted to this purpose later, as it was traditional that a painting of the Last Supper would be in a refectory. If you stand in the center of the room and move back and forth until the orthogonal lines of the mural, those diagonal lines that ...

Taher Bekri: Epic of the Thyme of Palestine

  Epic of the Thyme of Palestine By Taher Bekri In memory of Mahmoud Darwish Translated by Marilyn Hacker   I perfumed the hills and plains Nourished by brilliant light Accompanied wanderers’ steps Through the earth’s ancestral rites All those domes, bell-towers, temples Offered up for a thousand prayers   That sudden rain which mingled My scent with the steadfast stones Alert for gaping rifts The rocks grasp leaves that I dropped In the dusk of centuries stretching Themselves out in history’s pit   Neighbor sea, I loved your murmur That consoled my trembling, joined By flutes, rocked by solar olive trees They came by night with ...

Toronto Event: Photo Auction: Once I Was Here: Benefit for Syrian Refugees (31 January 2013)

Once I Was Here: Benefit for Syrian Refugees 31 January 2013 A silent auction of photographs in aid of Syrian refugees featuring the works of world-renowned frontline photojournalists. Click h

Alexandria Re-Imagined: The Revolution through Art

On 24 January 2011 – a day before the arc of Egyptian history would be altered – the film Microphone was screened. Microphone documents Alexandria’s pre-revolution underground scene of artists and musicians fighting a passive oppression that suffocates their ability to nurture their creativity. Khaled (played by Khaled Abol Naga), who has returned to Egypt from the US, wishes to aid the youth by providing them with a venue and funding for nurturing their talents. In one scene, Khaled is conversing with an official at the state’s cultural office to request support for his project. The dialogue proceeds as follows: Official: What is this graffiti? Is our role to ...

“I Have The Picture!” Egypt’s Photographic Heritage between Neoliberalism and Digital Reproduction (Part II)

The Arab Image Foundation (AIF)—a private archiving initiative founded by a group of artists and collectors in 1997, and run through foreign and local grants—appears on the surface like the very antithesis of the Library of Alexandria in Egypt (discussed in Part I of this article). While based in Beirut, the AIF holds a substantial collection of photographs from Egypt and represents an important model of archive and heritage-making in the region. The AIF’s approach to preserving and curating its extensive photographic collection is highly professional. Its online database is well presented, described, and sourced. The author and source (provenance) of every image ...

On the Exhibition THIS IS also GAZA

 To write this commentary, I draw on my knowledge as historian of twentieth-century Palestinian painting as well as my own experiences with some of these artists when I co-curated Al Jisser Group’s exhibition in New York, “Williamsburg Bridges Palestine.” Additionally, I have a little experience visiting Gaza and communicating with artists there. On one of my visits acting as consultant, I brought the director of the Station Museum in Houston to Gaza as part of the development of the “Made in Palestine” exhibition. This essay will be limited to discussion of static images – painting and photography; but the show is a mix of static pictorial arts, film and ...