Thursday, September 28 at 8:15pm | The Main Cinema
About Life on the CAPS Trilogy
Set on a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean called CAPS (short for ‘capsule’), Meriem Bennani’s trilogy transports us to a future where teleportation has replaced air travel. Enclosed by a magnetic shield, CAPS houses migrants who have been caught teleporting illegally. Settled into bustling enclaves, the citizens of CAPS have developed their own hybrid culture and modes of defiance to the US troops that patrol the island.
About Party on the CAPS
In a world where teleportation has replaced planes, a wacky crocodile named Fiona tells of life on the CAPS: an island-turned-refugee-camp for illegal immigrants caught mid-teleportation. Themes of displacement, biotechnology and privacy are evoked through the augmented reality of a raucous birthday party in the Moroccan quarter of the CAPS. Mixing the languages of reality TV, advertising, documentary, and high-end commercial aesthetics, Bennani explores the potential of storytelling through magical realism and humor.
About Guided Tour of a Spill
In Guided tour of a spill (CAPS interlude), our narrator is Fiona, a slime-green talking crocodile reminiscent of the Lacoste logo. Fiona takes us to a Moroccan neighborhood on CAPS where a group of freedom fighters train to resist the border police. In one scene, live-action footage shows the men preparing for battle. In the next shot, an animated stethoscope crawls out of the frame and takes the heartbeat of a young rebel. Bennani delights in merging documentary aesthetics with the hyperlinked weirdness of the internet to celebrate the ungovernable.
About Life on the CAPS
Life on the CAPS is the final chapter in Meriem Bennani’s film trilogy of the same name. In the world of the CAPS, teleportation has replaced air travel, and displaced populations utilize this mode of transportation to cross oceans and borders. Enclosed by a magnetic shield, the CAPS houses migrants who have been caught teleporting illegally. Settled into bustling enclaves, citizens of the CAPS have developed their own hybrid culture and modes of defiance in opposition to the US troops that patrol the island.
Director’s Bio
Meriem Bennani was born in Rabat, Morocco in 1988, and currently resides and works in New York. Bennani received her BFA from The Cooper Union in 2012 after receiving her MFA in Animation from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, France in 2011. Moving between the aesthetics of reality television, documentary, and animation, Bennani’s videos and installations embrace play and the absurd, while contemplating the intricacies of human behavior.
Presented by Mizna
Mizna is a critical platform for contemporary literature, film, art, and cultural production centering the work of Arab and Southwest Asian and North African artists. For more than twenty years, we have been creating a decolonized cultural space to reflect the expansiveness of our community and to foster exchange, examine ideas, and engage audiences in meaningful art.