Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

“The night between Ali and I”, is a fictional reenactment of one of the key events that happened in Lebanese and Levantine contemporary History: the highjack of 39 hostages at the Bank of America in Beirut, on October 18th, 1973. In this event four armed young fellows from the Lebanese Socialist Revolutionary Movement entered the bank, in Downtown Beirut, and asked from the authorities ten million dollars for the Arab fight against Imperialism in the region and the release of a few Arab political prisoners. They also requested that their demands and manifesto be published in the newspaper. The installation displayed as a tryptich with three main voices: Amer Farrough, one of the 4 men, Mariam, Ali’s sister and our own narration of the events. The images evoke in a particular way what happened during the night of the 26 hours that lasted the hijack but very much as we imagine things happen during the assault, and how the interaction between hostages and guerrilla gunmen in our view with a particular dance, a “deconstructed” dabke.

A collaboration between Nadia Hotait and Laila Hotait. Nadia Hotait is a multimedia artist that has exhibited her work at different international venues among others the Zolla/Lieberman gallery in Chicago, the Biennial of Young art in Moscow, Isabel Igancio Gallery in Seville and Digital Marrakesh. Nadia is recipient of INJUVE art award and the Generaciones 2015 art award and previously she was funded by LaCaixa to study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She studied her BA in audiovisual Communications in between Complutense University in Madrid and Waseda University in Tokyo. Laila Hotait is a filmmaker and artist with a PHD in audiovisual communications as a Fulbright grantee she studied filmmaking at San Francisco State University and her first film, Crayons of Askalan which was supported by AFAC in association with Sundance Documentary Institute, the DFI and Screen Instittute Beirut has played in over twenty international festivals.