Nadim Bahsoun

Cairography is a dance/performance video. Before it took an artistic form, Cairography was a set of fragments of conversations and stories of two non-Egyptian women friends whose relationship with Cairo ranged between paranoia over feeling constantly surveilled and nonchalance as a performance of resistance. It then grew to become an assortment of testimonials from strangers in the street and friends of the artists where issues of loss of personal space, sexual harassment, respect of privacy and shattered anonymity in public space have emerged.

In the fifties, young Alice leaves her natal Swiss mountains for the sunny and vibrant shores of Beirut. She falls madly in love with Joseph, a quirky astrophysicist intent on sending the first Lebanese national into space. Alice quickly fits in among his relatives, but after years of bliss, the civil war threatens their Garden of Eden.

The director turns the diary of his sexual adventures into a serial narrative in the style of “One Thousand and One Nights”. This polyamorously-minded queer musical applies the same playful approach to folk tales as it does to Egyptian pop music.