Abu Zaabal 89 by Bassam Mortada revisits the arrest of the filmmaker’s father during the iron and steel workers’ strike in Egypt in the summer of 1989. The film reflects on the lasting impact of this event on both individual and family memory. By returning to the period and its political and social context, and by tracing its effects within the family, the film opens space to engage with what remained unspoken in the relationship between father and son.
The film will be screened in Arabic with English subtitles.
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Bassam Mortada is a director, producer and activist. He studied independent filmmaking at the Jesuite Cairo Cinema School. As an independent filmmaker, Mortada worked with a number of independent institutions, NGOs, activists, to help document their life, struggle and work. In 2008, Mortada joined Al-Masry Media Corporation as a creative producer and director, where he helped set up the first independent Web-documentary TV in Egypt. He trained many journalists and managed to create a team of young video journalists, who broke grounds in the area of video journalism and produced many stories that went viral. His first feature documentary Reporting… a Revolution, in 2012 was about these journalists. It premiered in the Berlin IFF 2012 and toured many festivals worldwide. Abu Zaabal 89 is Mortada 2nd feature length documentary.
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Projects at the Lab: The Cinematheque | All That We Witness launched this December and continues into January with a series of encounters that look closely at contemporary directions in Arab documentary practice. The program turns to works that approach wider realities through the immediacy of lived experience; following how personal perspectives surface within, complicate, or cast new light on collective events. In doing so, it reopens the question of what the documentary form can offer today: how it examines the past, and how it engages the pressures and urgencies of the present moment.
The program brings together conversations, public discussions, and a workshop, alongside a film-screening series.