Preceded by a screening of the short film Of Yellow Was the Outer Sky.
Thirty-five years ago, I witnessed the kidnapping of a man I know. He has disappeared since. Ten years ago, I caught a glimpse of his face while walking in the street, but I wasn’t sure it was him. Parts of his face were torn off, but his features had remained unchanged since the incident. Yet something was different, as if he wasn’t the same man. Ghassan Halwani’s debut feature film uses documentary footage, animation, and performance to ruminate on the thousands of people who disappeared during the Lebanese Civil War.
Ghassan Halwani lives and works in Beirut. After his short animated film Jibraltar (2005), he was mainly involved in collaborations with Lebanese and other Arab filmmakers and artists. He directed a short animated closing segment of the documentary Lebanese Rocket Society (2012) by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige. Erase,__Ascent of the Invisible is his first feature-length documentary. He is currently contributing to the creation of a national archive of enforced disappearances in Lebanon.
Of Yellow Was the Outer Sky
Directed by Hisham Bizri | 8 min | 2018 | Lebanon | No Dialogue
US premiere
Of Yellow Was the Outer Sky is an ode to the fragility of life and the Syrian revolution which started on March 15, 2011.
Hisham Bizri is a filmmaker born in Beirut, Lebanon. He started working in films in the US and Hungary with filmmakers Stan Brakhage, Raoul Ruiz, and Miklós Jancsó, and has directed twenty-eight short films and written several feature films. Bizri’s films have shown at Sundance, Cannes, Berlin, Oberhausen, Moscow, and the Anthology Film Archives, and been featured over the years at Mizna’s Arab Film Fest. He has won the Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and the American Academy Rome Prize.
Twin Cities Arab Film Festival
Mizna and MSP Film Society present the 14th Twin Cities Arab Film Festival, screening more than thirty contemporary films from Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon, Qatar, Syria, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as those from local Arab filmmakers.
Browse Twin Cities Arab Film Festival