We’re delighted to welcome the team back from ArteEast to screen Dina Amer’s groundbreaking documentary You Resemble Me followed by a conversation between the filmmaker and Lila Nazemian, ArteEast’s Special Projects Curator.

Dina Amer’s You Resemble Me tells the story of Hasna, a young girl raised on the outskirts of Paris who was torn apart from her sister at an early age and placed in rotating foster homes. Struggling to find her identity and purpose, she finds herself caught in cycles of intergenerational trauma. The audience bears witness to transformations within Hasna, brought on by perpetual disappointments, heartbreaks and institutionalized barriers in her life that lead her on a path of no return. 

This event is part the program UN/BELONGING which presents films that share intimate stories from the North African immigrant experience in France. Set in varying temporalities and socio-political contexts, these fiction films reflect recurring and parallel struggles of individuals adapting to new realities in France and North Africa. The leading characters echo each other through scenes of perpetual wandering, in their pursuits for livelihood, safety, freedom, and ultimately, belonging. Despite their best efforts, they are all caught between the clutches of circumstances beyond their control. Yet, in the midst of such unrelenting and indifferent societies, these accounts shed necessary and humanizing light on the lingering realities of alienation and the search for a life worth living.

This program is co-presented by ArteEast and UnionDocs and is part of the legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, which preserves and presents 20 years of film and video programming by ArteEast. The program will be screened online on artearchive.org from August 12-20 and an in-person at UnionDocs on August 13th. 

An expanded program for UN/BELONGING will be screened online on ArteEast’s online platform Unpacking the ArteArchive.

Featuring works by Dina Amer, Latifa Said and Moumen Smihi

Online Screening: August 12 – 20, 2023
Online RSVP: artearchive.org
Free / $5 suggested donation
Available in the Middle East, North Africa, United States and Canada

Online Program includes:
Unquiet Days (Jours Intranquilles), Latifa Said, France, 2016, 29 min.
Si Moh, the Unlucky Man (Si Moh, pas de chance), Moumen Smihi, France,1971, 20 min.
You Resemble Me (Tu Me Ressembles), Dina Amer, United States/France /Egypt, 2021, 90 min.

FILM PROGRAM

Cultural and intergenerational trauma erupt in this story about two sisters on the outskirts of Paris. After the siblings are torn apart, the eldest, Hasna, struggles to find her identity, leading to a choice that shocks the world. Director Dina Amer takes on one of the darkest issues of our time and deconstructs it in an intimate story about family, love, sisterhood, and belonging.

Shot in Paris after Smihi completed film school, Si Moh, the Unlucky Man is an investigation of the life of migrant workers in France. Connected to the Maghreb by postcards and to his fellow migrants by shared experiences of alienation, the character Simoh negotiates the industrialized suburbs of Paris as the subject of his intimate camera. Smihi’s arresting images and musique concrète soundtrack (by the sound artist Gerard Delassus) create an experimental and modernist intervention into the city

Unquiet Days is the story of Fadila, a cabaret singer who escapes Oran after being threatened to death by religious fundamentalists. Algeria is in the middle of a civil war. She arrives to Aubagne, close to Marseille, to the home of one of her friends. But her friend does not live there anymore, so she wanders in a village where she does not know anyone, until the day she meets a former legionnaire who also lived for a few years in Algeria.

BIOS

Dina Amer is an award-winning filmmaker and journalist. She helped produce the Oscar nominated and Emmy award-winning documentary The Square, where the Egyptian Revolution was chronicled from the frontlines. Growing up between the US and Egypt, her work has focused on sharing nuanced, human stories with a global audience. Previous to her film work, Dina was a celebrated journalist. She was an on-air correspondent for VICE, including The Black Market Series, where she uncovered the human trafficking of Syrian refugees and explored the underground economy of illegal Egypt-Gaza tunnels. Her written work has been published in The New York Times, CNN and the Huffington Post. You Resemble Me is her directorial debut.

Latifa Said initially worked as professional photographer for institutions and magazines such as Télérama, GéoAdo or The League Against the Cancer. In March 2015, she wrote her first screenplay, “Jours Intranquilles” (Unquiet Days), winning first prize of the SIRAR Bourse at the International Aubagne Film Festival. It was produced by Le GREC (Groupe de Recherche et d’Essais Cinématographiques) and was selected in some twenty festivals. In 2017, she directed a second short film, “Terrain Vague” (Wasteland), shot in 35mm, and produced by Saudade Productions and Bando à Parte. The film had its world premiere at the Curtas Vila do Conde  competition (Portugal, 2017) and was selected in almost 100 festivals, winning 20 prizes, including a Jury Special Mention at the Fameck Arab Film Festival, in France, First Prize at Festival Ecran Libre d’Aigues-Mortes, in France, and Grand Prix Best Short 2017 in Festival du Film de Sarlat, in France. In 2018 she directed the short documentary “Tahiti”, entirely shot in Alger and in the following year she completed another short fiction, “La Chambre” (The Room) which is currently available on Netflix. In 2021, she directed the short film “Toutes les Nuits” (Behind Closed Doors), which was among the official selections of the International Festival of Francophone Film in Acadie (FICFA) (Canada, 2021). In 2022, “Toutes les Nuits” won Best Short at Avanca Film Festival 2022, and the Cinematic Achievement Award at TISFF, among other awards. Latifa Said is currently preparing her first feature, “Plus Longue Sera la Nuit” (Longer Will Be the Night), to be shot in Algeria.

Born in 1945 in Tangier, Morocco, Moumen Smihi attended film school at the influential IDHEC (L’institut des hautes études cinématographiques) in Paris from 1965 to 1969). Deeply influenced by the revolutionary ideas of 1968 Paris and driven by a desire to interweave this social and political consciousness with his experience of the Maghreb, Smihi began his career with the short film Si Moh, pas de chance/Si Moh, the Unlucky Man (1971) and returned to Morocco for his much-acclaimed first feature, El Chergui, ou, le silence violent/The East Wind (1975). Ever since, he has continued to address contemporary Moroccan realities such as colonial histories, political censorship, religion, and ethnic, racial, and linguistic diversity. Smihi’s groundbreaking work, pursued over a long and prolific career, includes documentaries, shorts, and feature-length work made in Morocco, Egypt, and France, as well as five volumes of writing comprising critical interviews, articles on Arab, European, and Hollywood cinemas, and essays on film theory.

Lila Nazemian (she/her) is an independent curator and the Special Projects Curator at ArteEast in New York. In 2023, she joined the Brooklyn-based Transmitter gallery as a co-director. Her research and curatorial practice are focused on reimagining approaches to histories from the Middle East/Southwest Asia North Africa (SWANA) and Central Asia regions in an effort to counter narrative revisionism and collective amnesia. Recent curatorial projects include: “Conjuring Flames,” Arsenal Contemporary, New York, (2023); “Now That We Have Established A Common Ground” within Protocinema’s Emerging Curator Series, (2022);  “A Few In Many Places, New York,” Protocinema, Governors Island New York, (2021); “I open my eyes and see myself under a tree laden with fruit that I cannot name,” Center for Book Arts, New York (2020).

She received a B.A. in History from Scripps College, California; and an M.A. in Near Eastern Studies from N.Y.U., New York. She was a QAYYEM 2019 Curatorial Fellow, was among the inaugural participants of the 2018-2019 Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program in New York and participated in ICI’s 2018 Curatorial Intensive in Bangkok.