Today, a two-part series of screenings by Lebanese artist Akram Zaatari continues with his feature length documentary film This Day. This is Zaatari's second project in Portland - in Fall 2005, Mapping Sitting, his collaboration with Walid Raad, came to Reed's Cooley Gallery. This time, Zaatari was able to travel to Portland and is in attendance at all screenings. Many of the same themes are present in Zaatari's video work. Last Thursday, the three short films included a story of the last meeting between two friends, set in a once grand shopping district in Bereuit that was later destroyed during the Civil War; a documentary on several young males who relayed disarmingly frank stories of sexual conquest, in the process revealing their own vulnerabilities to social mythologies of virility and machoism; and a documentary about Zaatari's quest to recover a buried letter from a figure in the Lebanese resistance. Tonight, Zaatari will present a feature length documentary that uses archival images from Lebanon to explore the notion (or delusions) of photographic truth.

PROGRAM NOTES

Lebanese video artist and curator Akram Zaatari has created more than 30 videos and installations, and is one of the founding members of the Arab Image Foundation - a Beirut-based organization that aims to promote photography in the Middle East and North Africa by locating, collecting, and preserving the region's photographic heritage. With that, much of Akram's video work is centered on examining the role of photographic representation. Through collecting and archiving images from his country, Akram focuses on historical issues relating to the Lebanese Civil Wars, resistance to and mediation of these conflicts, and male sexuality...Akram's recent feature length documentary This
Day uses as its starting point archival images, from portraits of Bedouins in the desert to war era Beirut, to ruminate on the role of the photograph's ability to convey truth.

This Day [2003, video, color, sound, 86 min]
Saturday, December 2nd · 7:30 p
New American Art Union 922 SE Ankeny Street · 503.231.8294
Suggested donation: $6.00 · Members: $3.00
Presented by Cinema Project in collaboration with Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College