Akram Zaatari

‘Objects of War’ is a series of testimonials on the Lebanese war. Each person chooses an object, ordinary or unusual, which serves as a starting point for his / her story. These testimonials while helping to create a collective memory, also show the impossibility of telling a single History of this war. Only fragments of this History are recounted here, held as truth by those expressing them. In ‘Objects of War’, the aim is not to reveal a truth but rather to gather and confront many diverse versions and discourses on the subject. ‘Objects of War’ started in 1999 assembling the testimonials of eleven persons. It was first shown in 2000 . It continued in 2003 with ‘Objects of War n°2’, recording seven additional testimonials. This time however, and since then, the recorded material is left unedited, shown in its integrity. The work of collecting and assembling these stories continued with ‘Objects of War n°3 & n°4’ in 2006 and ‘n°5 & 6’ in 2014.

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A journalist and a photographer drift on their way between Beirut and Baalbeck. Their journey is repeated three times in three different ways to evoke current issues and confusion in Lebanon’s present state.

The Script is born out of the artist’s research into online content connected with the Arab world. Exploring YouTube using relatively neutral search terms such as ‘father and son’, Zaatari discovered multiple videos depicting fathers praying. Despite being produced by different men from different regions in the Middle East, Zaatari observed telling similarities in content which depicted men fulfilling the duty of salah — the ritual of five daily prayers undertaken by practicing Muslims — within a domestic setting. As breaking off from prayer is often frowned upon, the fathers continue praying despite their children’s mischievous attempts to distract them. In The Script, Zaatari presents a filmed re-enactment of these touching moments, paying homage to dual commitment to faith and fatherhood.

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.

How I Love You is an exploration of sexuality among gay men in Lebanon. A couple and three individuals talk about their sex lives, about commitments and failures, about their relationships to their bodies, about their passions and love in a society where homosexuality is still punished by imprisonment. The video uses light to produce a white veil that obstructs seeing, hence rendering character identification almost impossible. Through this obstruction, the video locates itself within a specific social context.

How I Love You is an exploration of sexuality among gay men in Lebanon. A couple and three individuals talk about their sex lives, about commitments and failures, about their relationships to their bodies, about their passions and love in a society where homosexuality is still punished by imprisonment. The video uses light to produce a white veil that obstructs seeing, hence rendering character identification almost impossible. Through this obstruction, the video locates itself within a specific social context.

In 1998, Akram Zaatari interviewed Egyptian photographer Van Leo in Cairo. In 2001 he made the video Her + Him Van Leo and based it on the story of a woman who once entered Studio Van Leo and asked the artist to take pictures of her naked. At the time, Zaatari had access to a few of the woman's twelve pictures. In 2010 Zaatari came across the entire series showing "Nadia" undressing in twelve poses and expanded the original work into this re-edited, remastered version.

This work deals with the discovery of light and of its power to reconstruct images. Through a boy who discovers the possibilities of framing and manipulating light with a mirror, the idea of making images appears in the daily life of the children living in the old streets of Saida. Reflected light becomes a knowledge that is transmitted from child to child and a source of friendship and curiosity.

TEACH ME is an interpretation of iconic images. This short essay is built on the ascription of a new meaning to TV news footage. The mingling of news soundtracks with dialogues from old Egyptian films enriches the meaning of the images.

Unravels a dual journey – extroverted in place, introverted in memory. Beginning with a photograph taken in the 1950s by historian Jibrail Jabbour the film journeys further into Jabbour’s photographic archives, then into the filmmaker’s personal photo-diary of the Israeli invasion of his hometown, Saida. Zaatari probes that obscure compulsion to document one’s environs, in the everyday or when enduring a potentially fatal event.

Shot on Gouraud Street in Gemayzeh and edited by Zaatari in Beirut, Lebanon.

An eleven-minute film by Akram Zaatari from 1995. Memories and images of childhood are reflected both on the screen and in the small mirror that a young boy plays with. Filmmaker and video artist Akram Zaatari was born in Saida, Lebanon in 1966 and currently lives in Beirut. His art practice also includes photography, installation, critical writing and curating.

It is a critique of television's promotion of political figures. A candidate running for presidency talks about his political agenda and addresses the public with a general and casual speech on issues such as resistance, cultural heritage, and education.

Twenty-Eight Nights and a Poem explores the work of photographer Hashem el Madani, who has run a commercial photography studio in southern Lebanon for the last five decades. After spending years photographing people in front of their shops, in public squares or at the beach, el Madani opened the studio in response to his community’s desire to appear before the camera. Moving between el Madani’s studio in Saïda and the Arab Image Foundation – an image archive in Beirut now housing the majority of el Madani’s photographic collection – the film examines the changing sites, status and function of photographic practice and preservation though various analogue and digital media.

"Zaatari got his start in the freewheeling and somewhat rough-and-tumble world of Lebanese television in the mid-1990s. Zaatari was hired in 1995 as the executive producer of a morning television program for Future TV. Lebanon’s television industry had just been reorganized to curb the broadcasting excesses of the previous era; every party and militia across the political spectrum had set up its own station during the civil war. When the conflict ended, the government reduced the more than fifty channels to around ten. Future TV was one of the newer, more professional stations that aggressively recruited young creative types and gave them unfettered access to equipment, along with relative freedom to produce highly experimental documentaries. Zaatari’s earliest videos were originally screened as filler between the morning show’s segments."

A documentary crew digs up a letter from a Lebanese socialist resistance fighter.

Set in the industrial suburbs of Beirut, Majnounak explores male sexuality through interviews with men who recount one of their sexual relationships. Attentive to details of body and sexual language, songs, indications of each interlocutor’s erotic imaginary, the film tries to sketch a portrait of the ”male” they identify with. Patterns emerge, as do norms, but also an unsuspected map of Beirut’s sites of sexual encounters.

"A 4 channel video installation based on youtube material made by individuals filming themselves in Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Yemen, and Libya."

This portrait of famed Armenian-Egyptian studio photographer Van Leo, whose career spanned some 50 years, is also a reflection on transformations in the practice of photography, from hand-developing to digital manipulation. As Zaatari puts it, "Van Leo used photography to display multiple images of himself, assuming different identities. At a time when nationalism was rising in Egypt, Van Leo was plotting, encouraging, and promoting multiple subjectivities.”

In a city post-apocalypse, young men communicate only through smart devices. They make home out of urban debris. They can’t speak to each other, but are still able to dream.

A late night online chat between two men who haven't met since the turn of the millennium leads to their reunion after ten years of separation. The film navigates against time with an unsettling use of communication, recording technologies and temporal gaps.

A reflection on film and television, this video travels the globe mixing footage of real-life war and reel entertainment. COUNTDOWN explores our sense of real-time transmission and movement through space as we experience them in televised images of breaking news.

On Photography, People and Modern Times is a two-channel video installation that tracks photographic records that Akram Zaatari researched and collected for the Arab Image Foundation between 1998 and 2000. It is a meditation on the two lives of photographs: once in the hands of the people who cherished them, and then in an environment that secures their preservation. Cutting across temporal and geographic borders, the film probes the nature of humans’ relationships with photographs and highlights the limits of standard preservation.

RED CHEWING GUM recounts a story of separation between two men. It is a video letter that is set in the context of the changing Hamra, a formerly booming commercial center. It examines the tool of video and image making in relationship to consumption, age, desire and power as they all compare to one of the characters' attempt to capture, hence possess, fleeting time.