And Nietzsche’s Zarathustra offered an exemplary case of the dizziness that results in such movement between Arabic and other languages. I will not ask you to perform the work of the film, but wondered if there is something more you could say regarding your attraction to Nietzsche or this particular work, and its relevance or force in 2007 and even 2018.ĪA: Initially the interest lay precisely in this gap of the translation that grew further in me personally while reading, thinking and writing in languages other than Arabic. Then, the choice of Friedrich Nietzsche, especially without having seen what you intended, seems a more untimely one to place. Firstly, if the choice of Pasolini as a contemporary interlocutor, in hindsight, seems a perfectly logical one: an avowed communist, a critical filmmaker and public intellectual, a voice of conscience, a European coming from a Leftist tradition but carrying with him the blindspots of that same tradition regarding development, modernity, colonialism, and racism.
I make these notes, because I think they may open up interesting questions. And what struck me in that film upon my multiple viewings with different publics was that it really spoke to viewers in different ways it had this unique capacity to speak differently to different viewers concurrently. It is also a film which uses time – the 40 years between the making of the two films as well as the two thousand years separating Pasolini and yourself from the biblical story that he was seeking to stage or retell – as a critical element to help the viewer take distance from and at the same time encounter Palestine as they may never have seen it. It is a film about a film, and another filmmaker, who, even if no longer living, you confront as a contemporary and someone you wish to be in dialogue with. RG: For those who are not familiar with your film Pasolini Pa* Palestine from 2005, in it you retrace, redraw, and reconsider Pier Paolo Pasolini’s journey and film made 40 years earlier seeking locations in Palestine for the film The Gospel According to Matthew. Another way is that it is a follow up to Pasolini Pa* Palestine: in the same way that Pasolini was looking for locations of his The Gospel According to Matthew in Palestine, one could search for locations of a film based on Thus Spoke Zarathustra in the Arab Geographies. I found that amusing, and so I wanted to confront, stage and think about the book while on this trip.
He also had to explain that this sentence is not valid for us the Arabic speakers and that basically it is not blasphemy. For example, the simple sentence God is dead, he altered in his translation. I felt then that there was some kind of difficulty for Fares the translator, that came through in his Introduction. So, it was interesting for me to revisit that encounter of the Arabic speakers and Nietzsche. It was the Arabic translation by Felix Fares that I found there. To expand that geography I needed some help, and for that I chose Nietzsche’s Zarathustra since I had first encountered the book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra in Bethlehem very early on, in a small bookstore there. It was the first time that bureaucratically such a trip was possible, since if you only have your Palestinian ID and travel document such a trip would not have been easy. Can you describe what you had in mind at that time and what you intended for the film?Īyreen Anastas: The first motivation was to undertake a trip to as many Arab countries as I possibly could, to expand the geography that I grew up in, which was Palestine occupied and historical.
Rene Gabri: You have the task of trying to introduce two films at once, the first the original one planned in 2007, and the second the one we will be screening in Berlin in 2018. This text was originally published in 2021 by LUX.
You can find more information about the screening here.
#HINDSIGHT IN A SENTENCE SERIES#
The conversation coincides with the film's screening at e-flux Screening Room on March 14th at 7 pm, which is the last event in the series Aesthetics of Resistance: Straub-Huillet and Contemporary Moving-Image Art. However, due to the changing geopolitical climate and the revolutionary aspirations that emerged in the region, the film underwent multiple iterations before finally being completed in 2018 with the assistance of philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy. Still from Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri, An Untimely Film for Every One and No One (2018)Īyreen Anastas and Rene Gabri discuss their remarkable film, An Untimely Film for Every One and No One (2018), which began as an adaptation of Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, set in the contemporary Arab world.
0 kommentar(er)
