- Description:
- DVD - Region 1.   reference copy.   1 videodisc of 1.
color and b/w.  
fullscreen.   sound.  
- Notes:
- Essay booklet available from checkout.
Titles
+ Birthday Suit With Scars and Defects
- Director:
- Steele, Lisa
- Running Time:
- Short.   13 minutes
- Sound:
- sound
- Color:
- b/w
- Country:
- Canada
- Year:
- 1974
- Language:
- English
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Documentary, Female Directors
- Notes:
- On the occasion of her 27th birthday, the artist made this work which chronicles her passage through time. In the tape, she undresses, then reveals, touches, counts, dates and recounts the story of every scar on her body.
+ Safe Sound
- Director:
- Antar, Ziad
- Running Time:
- Short.   9 minutes
- Sound:
- sound
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- Lebanon
- Year:
- 2006
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Documentary, War
- Notes:
- Following the Israeli attack on Lebanon in 2006, the filmmaker examines the boredom of everyday life in a besieged country.
+ Measures of Distance
- Director:
- Hatoum, Mona
- Running Time:
- Short.   15 minutes
- Sound:
- sound
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- United Kingdom
- Year:
- 1988
- Language:
- Arabic and English
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Documentary, Female Directors
- Notes:
- In this video, the artist tries to overcome the effects of distance, and reflects on geography represented in exile due to war, and on the psychological distance represented in each one’s approach to her womanhood. The video beautifully weaves personal images and audio recordings of a very intimate nature, binding the personal with the political.
Reading aloud from letters sent by her mother in Beirut, Hatoum creates a visual montage reflecting her feelings of separation and isolation from her Palestinian family. The personal and political are inextricably bound in a narrative that explores personal and family identity against a backdrop of traumatic social rupture, exile and displacement.
+ Face A / Face B
- Director:
- Mroué, Rabih
- Running Time:
- Short.   10 minutes
- Sound:
- sound
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- Lebanon
- Year:
- 2002
- Language:
- Arabic with English subtitles
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Documentary
- Notes:
- Artist Rabih Mroué looks back at old audio recordings, which were made by him and his parents to be sent as audio letters to his brother while he studied abroad. The old recordings become the site of a political critique of the packaged values of communism, resistance and martyrdom.
+ Take Into the Air My Quiet Breath
- Director:
- Meltzer, Julia; Thorne, David
- Running Time:
- Short.   16 minutes
- Sound:
- sound
- Color:
- color and b/w
- Country:
- Syria, USA
- Year:
- 2007
- Language:
- Arabic with English subtitles
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Documentary, Female Directors
- Notes:
- In 1966, the Syrian government's Ministry of Endowments solicited plans for a building to replace a 14th-century Mamluk mosque in Martyr's Square in the center of Damascus. A young architect proposed a design for a 5-star hotel and new mosque. In 1971, his plans were scrapped. In 1982, a building began to be built. Hospital? Parking garage? Military housing? The project--now called the Basel al-Asad Center--has been the subject of much rumor and speculation. As of 2007, the building remains unfinished. In this documentary video, an architect recounts the chronicle of the building and considers its possible future.