2 weeks ago
Seven contributors from across the NAAS network explore the layered relationships between place, displacement, and collective cinematic practice. Working in contexts marked by ongoing social and political transformations, each contributor confronts the tensions between locality and dislocality. Through photo essays, personal stories, and archival reflections, this dossier brings their insights into dialogue.
In her editorial titled “A Reassuring Impermanence”, Nour introduces the concept of the dossier, reflecting on how screens, audiences, and workers are impacted by their environments. She challenges the idea that locality must mean permanence, or that movement always implies loss. In a region marked by political tension and repeated displacement, Nour asks: “How might movement be reimagined as a generative force, as a pathway toward forms still waiting to be discovered?”
CONTRIBUTIONS:
Marking Zawya Cinema’s 10th anniversary, Malak Makar proposed an unconventional way to reflect on a decade of running an independent cinema: by “remembering-through-crises”. The resulting piece revisits some of the “disasters” the team has faced: technical breakdowns, political upheavals, shifting locations – all documented over the years on a piece of paper they now refer to as “the List” (hence the title).
They share select entries from this evolving timeline and contemplate how these moments have shaped their relationship to the space, their audience, and to one another.
Metropolis and Shifting Urban Memory by Samer Bou Saleh
Since its founding in 2006, Beirut’s Metropolis Cinema has relocated three times — each move shaped by the city’s evolving urban and political landscape. In his photo essay, Samer Bou Saleh traces this journey from Hamra to Achrafieh, and most recently to Mar Mikhael, one of the areas hardest hit by the 2020 port explosion.
Through the lens of Metropolis, the piece explores how space, memory, and cinema are tightly intertwined in a city where cultural institutions are often forced to adapt, relocate, or rebuild. Samer’s reflections highlight how urban memory is not just remembered but reimagined through cinema, and through the spaces that hold it.
How The Story of Metropolis Exposed the City’s Secret by Sahar Mandour (only available in Arabic)
Sahar Mandour also looks back on Metropolis Cinema’s many moves across Beirut and what each one reveals about the city. She reflects on how the ability to relocate has become key to the cinema’s survival, and how change, not stability, might be what keeps it going.
A word about Hussein’s archive by Talal Afifi (only available in Arabic)
In the fourth contribution, Talal Afifi guides us through the rich archive of Hussein Shariffe, one of Sudan’s most prominent cultural filmmakers. Afifi introduces rare photos, videos and audio tapes from Hussein’s unfinished projects and restorations – materials tracing a history of exile and resistance, offering a powerful glimpse into erased or sidelined narratives in Sudanese cinema and memory.
Between Fantasized Liberation & Internalized Violence and Bias: Young Audiences and Reading Films by Insaf Machta (only available in Arabic)
In this essay, Insaf Machta reflects on the work of Sentiers – Massarib with young audiences in Tunisia. She writes about the possibilities and challenges of creating as well as maintaining (physical and conceptual) spaces for sharing cinema with new generations. Drawing from personal and collective experience, she highlights the importance of reclaiming screening spaces and building new networks outside of dominant institutional models.
In Search of “The Turn” by Reman Sadani and Ali Shmayyel (only available in Arabic)
The final contribution to this dossier begins with a notebook found by Reman Sadani and Ali Shmayyel in the cinema library of Iraqi film critic Mahdi Abbas. While searching for traces of “The Turn”, an unfinished film by Iraqi director Jafaar Ali, they came across notes from an unknown individual trying to find a space to screen the film in Baghdad. Their essay revisits the film’s fragmented history and connects it to the country’s broader transformations. Along the way, they reflect on the blurred lines between private and public, individual and collective, and the challenging quest to create independent screening spaces in Iraq today.
All six pieces come together to challenge the idea that locality requires permanence, or that dislocality means impermanence. Through the lens of cinema culture, they show how shifting spaces can still hold meaning, connection, and continuity. In a region marked by political turbulence, changing borders, and displacement, this state of perpetual motion–echoing Nour’s words–can be embraced as a generative and creative force.
We invite you to explore the full dossier on Malaffat.
