Salon Marie Rose: Queer Arabs in Exile

Name: Salon Marie Rose: Queer Arabs in Exile
Start: 2022-11-05T15:00:00+01:00
End: 2022-11-05T22:00:00+01:00
Location: Melahuset

November 5, 2022, 3:00 pm - 10:00 pm

English

العربي

English

العربي

Program

البرنامج

Program

البرنامج

Film program during Salon Marie Rose

Films on loop during Salon Marie Rose (matiné)

Marco (2019, 22')

Marco (2019, 22′)

Directed by Saleem Haddad

Language: English & Arabic
Subtitles: English

Omar has been living in London for a decade. He spends his days working in the City, and his nights ignoring phone calls from his family back in Lebanon. One evening, restless after another pleading voicemail from his mother, he invites over Marco, a Spanish student newly-arrived in London, who’s doing sex work to earn some extra cash. But when Marco arrives, Omar can’t shake the feeling that something’s not quite right about the young man. As their night together progresses truths are revealed, defences are lowered, and Omar discovers the lengths that Marco has gone to to arrive in London.

Run(a)way Arab (2018, 12')

Runaway Arab (2018, 12′)

Directed by Amrou Al-Kadhi

Language: Arabic

Subtitle: English

NAZEEM is a 26 year old Middle Eastern drag queen who names herself QUEEN ZA DREAM – she is preparing for a show with the utmost gravity, with an outfit evocative of an Egyptian deity.
Interwoven with this is the story of NAZEEM as a genderqueer 8 year-old boy, and the close bond he has with his Iraqi-Egyptian mother, HALIMA. Whilst flamboyant and in many ways a drag queen herself on the surface, HALIMA is governed by the strict expectations of gender in Arab society.
When a young NAZEEM transgresses these boundaries, HALIMA reacts in a way that is utterly confusing to him. Only though his drag, is the adult NAZEEM able to keep sacred the memories of his mother before this painful moment, and hold on to their connection.

Another Dream (2019, immersive)

Directed by: Tamara Shogaolu

Another Dream, a hybrid animated documentary and VR game, brings the gripping, true love story of an Egyptian lesbian couple to life. Faced with a post-revolution backlash against the LGBTQ community, they escape Cairo to seek asylum and acceptance in the Netherlands.

Film screening during Salon Marie Rose (soirée)

ISMYRNA (2016, 50')

Ismyrna (2016, 50)

Lebanon/France/UAE 2016
Directed by Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige
Language: French
Subtitles: English

Joana met the artist and poet Etel Adnan at the end of the 1990s. They quickly grew close, bound by links to a city they had never been to: Smyrna formerly, Izmir today. Joana’s paternal Greek family were forced into exile from Smyrna by the Turkish armies after the end of the Ottoman Empire. Etel’s Greek mother, was born in Smyrna, married to a Syrian officer of the Ottoman Army and exiled to Lebanon after the fall of the empire. Etel and Joana lived in an imaginary Smyrna, today Izmir, without ever setting foot there. At present, both find themselves engaged in questions around the transmission of history, and interrogate their attachment to objects, places, the constructions of imaginaries and mythologies without images. Their personal experiences, their stories serve as a background to the region’s changes after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the evolution of the borders questionning the notion of identity and belonging.