Mohamed Soueid, Tango of Yearning, 1998, Lebanon, film still
Cinema Fouad (1993), Mohamed Soueid, Lebanon, 41 min. Arabic with English subtitles
Khaled, a Syrian transgender migrant who was born male, dreams of undergoing gender transition surgery. While trying to make a living from various menial jobs, she falls in love with a Palestinian freedom fighter and joins his resistance. Gently, compassionately, Cinema Fouad draws a portrait of Khaled and introduces the viewer to one of Beirut’s rarely seen netherworlds.
Tango of Yearning (1998), Mohamed Soueid, Lebanon, 70 min. Arabic with English subtitles
Tango of Yearning takes its title from “Tango of Hope,” a classic ballad by Nur al-Huda, and centers around the filmmaker’s life in Beirut as he lives it in the shadow of a city plagued by civil war. Subjective and sentimental, the movie considers the paradoxes of life and concludes with a meditation on forgiveness.
Being Camelia (selection, 1994), Mohamed Soueid, Lebanon, 5 min. Arabic with English subtitles
Being Camelia is a series of experimental short clips that Mohamed Soueid directed while being part of the team of TéléLiban, Lebanon’s main public television channel. Intended initially as a special filler program on food, and scheduled to be aired during Ramadan, in 1994, these 34 x 5 min. were turned into a controversial satirical daily series criticizing Lebanese food culture and depicting the ongoing changes occurring in postwar Lebanon.
August 10: With presentation by Mohamed Soueid and Rasha Salti
Mohamed Soueid is a Lebanese writer, dramaturge, filmmaker and producer.
Rasha Salti is a curator and writer with a focus on film practice in the Arab World. She lives and works between Beirut and Paris.
TV Politics is a film program that revisits some of the most significant attempts to articulate a radical approach to the politics of television since the mid twentieth century. It revisits film works conceived for the purpose of rethinking what television could be, while at the same time seeking to provide a different kind of analysis of social and cultural reality.
