DIMASHQ
Video; 15’21”
Arabic with English Subtitles
2018; Syria, Germany.
Author: Natalia Ali
SCREENING DATE: Friday 24 and Saturday 25 April 2020 – 48 hours available on Vimeo HIER&JETZT: Connections
SYNOPSIS
Due to a family situation I have travelled to Damascus very often in recent years, the images I took, mainly from my mother’s apartment, show the banality of war. Between everyday life, fear and horror in contrary to the images of war transmitted by the media, the video shows neither destroyed buildings nor injured people, the horror is inside and the sound alone transfers fear and violence. The video (Damascus-Dimashq) consists of various short sequences that I recorded in Syria between 2017 and 2018.
Even in war, life goes on, a concert, a reading evening, an explosion, the events leave me disturbed at first, and yet I become part of it. We have been paralyzed by the long years of war. My impotence remains unaffected. The camera creates a distance between me and everyday life
allowing me to observe what’s going on.
NATALIA ALI
Natalia Ali, was born in 1986 in Damascus, studied Art in Damascus university, then Berlin.
In 2018 got her Meisterschülerin* degree Class Ursula Neugebauer from Berlin university of Arts UdK.
She works in a socio-cultural context. This film was the graduation project in 2018.