My Work and Personal Highlights of 2022

Sharing a list of all the things I worked on this year, and cities I travelled to. This is mostly a personal exercise to keep track of what I did and achieved.

New Artwork:

In the summer of 2020, I started work on a video titled A Performance of Valour. It was a commission for Abu Dhabi Art’s Emerging Artist program curated by Maya El Khalil and was exhibited in November as a work in progress. The aim was to complete it before the exhibition ended in January 2021, but it ended a month earlier and I never got a chance to complete it the way I wanted to. I finally managed to complete it this year, for Portrait of a Nation: Beyond Narratives exhibition, also curated by Maya El Khalil.

For now, the video is only available to watch by request, so if you’re interested, get in touch. But below are a couple of gifs and description.

A Performance of Valour
Video, 4.08 min, 2020/2022
A meditation on masculinity, performance, representation and national identity. A collage of found footage, film excerpts and stock videos, its starting point is the 1980 World Disco Dancing Championship in London which included a participant from the United Arab Emirates.

Music produced and remixed by Moath "Qonami" Bin Hafez.

Supported by:
Abu Dhabi Art's Beyond: Emerging Artists 2020 (Abu Dhabi Art)
Portrait of a Nation II: Beyond Narratives, 2022 (Abu Dhabi Art & Music Foundation)
Curated by Maya El-Khalil

Writings:

• I wrote two pieces for Tribe, a magazine about photography, film, and moving image from the Arab world, as their new Moving Image Editor:
  Memory Box: An Interview with Joana Hadjithomas
  The Sky Oscillates between Eternity and Its Immediate Consequences: An Interview with Nadim Choufi

• Wrote an short introduction essay for Jameel Arts Centre about film program I curated, Yesterday Was Like This in Dubai.

Podcast:

• Wael Hattar and I recorded a two part catch-up conversation after not recording together for a while.
  Part 1
  Part 2

• Interviewed Ana Lily Amirpour about her film Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon.

• Interviewed Nora Razian, Head of Exhibitions at Art Jameel about exhibition trends.

Film Programming / Curation:

• Jameel Arts Centre
  Yesterday Was Like This in Dubai
  

• CineMAS 2022 - The Alternative Film Festival at Manarat Al Saadiyat

  I was invited back to curate the 3rd edition of the festival and this time we were able to fly in a couple of filmmakers.

  We hosted a festival prevent titled UAE Stories showing a series of short films by UAE filmmakers and it
  I was happy to meet and spend time with Omar El Zohairy, director of Feathers and Jenny Perlin, director of Bunker, and moderated talks with them about their works.
  
  Before the opening night, we hosted a pre-festival event showing a series of short films by filmmakers from the UAE. The discussion after it was very enriching and shed light on how little support filmmakers living in this country get (professionally and financially).
  

  The festival was also written about in The National: CineMAS 2022 to feature short films from the UAE alongside independent international gems

• Unpacking the ArteArchive - ArteEast
  What Existed Yesterday Might Disappear Tomorrow, a programme of short films co-presented by ArteEast and Tribe. The films were shown online and I hosted one in-person screening in Dubai at Alliance Francaise with a post screening discussion with Nezar Andary about film history and archive in the region.
  
  

• Etihad Museum
  Two films by Nujoom Alghanem, Between Two Banks (1999) and Sounds of the Sea (2014)
  
  

• NYUAD Art Gallery and NYUAD Arts Center
  A short film program and talk titled Bayn Al Khaleej (Between the Gulf) that I am hoping to turn into a series and screen at different venues.
  
  

• The Culturist Film Club
  A new bi-monthly screening event hosted by me at Alliance Francaise in Dubai, and I am very grateful to be given a space to do.
  September: Rien à foutre / Zero F*cks Given
  November: Illusions Perdue / Lost Illusions
  

Talks:

• Presented at Eye International Conference 2022 - Global Audiovisual Archiving: Exchange of Knowledge and Practices in a section titled Challenging the Red Tape. My presentation was about the gatekeeping and control of archives.
  

• Was on a panel discussion about diversity and cinema for an event organised by Institut Français in Abu Dhabi.

• Led two sessions of Dubai related film discussions for participants of the first edition of Night School at Jameel Arts Centre, led by Todd Reisz.

• Organised a talk for Manarat Al Saadiyat titled Show and Tell: Fawazeer Ramadan - Nelly and Sherihan. It included my brother Khalid Mezaina, Azim Al Ghussein and Lina Younes.
  The talk inspired my brother to make a zine titled Fawazine (a brilliant name suggested by Azim) with contributions by artists selected by Khalid, including yours truly! Read more about Fawazine on Khalid’s blog.

Travels and Film Festivals:

Paris, April 2022

• Paris: Attended Cinéma du Réel, FIAF Winter School: Programmimg Film Heritage, Howard Hawks Retrospective at Cinematheque and a whole bunch of other repertory screenings in other cinemas because Paris is great like that.
  

• Venice for the film festival (still working on my piece about this), Vienna for Viennale, Amsterdam for Eye Conference and IDFA.
  https://www.theculturist.com/home/lido-walks
  https://www.theculturist.com/home/vienna-text-october-2022
  https://www.theculturist.com/home/amsterdam-text-november-2022
  

• Travelling also meant I got to see my film festival friends that I’ve not seen since 2020, Alex Fuller in Paris, Matt Mansfield in Vienna.
  
  Bumping into Miriam Bale at the Cinémathéque Française and having a lovely outdoor bistro lunch the following day. Felt very Parisian!
  
  Talking about films and New York with Glenn Kenny, talking about films and the Arab world with Jay Weissberg.

  
  Finally meeting Eric Hynes at IDFA, after following him on Twitter and for years.
  
  All this to say, good people that I was happy to spend some time with. Hope to catch up with more of my film fest friends in 2023.

Other highlights:

• I was one of the jury members at the 5th edition of Sharjah Film Platform, Sharjah Art Foundations’s annual film festival.
  

• The blog turned 13. A teen!
  

• A Performance of Valour was selected to screen at the 20th edition of the London Short Film Festival in January 2023. It’s included in a program titled Documentary: In Response To, Resisting / Remaking showing on January 28 at ICA. Yay!
  Special thanks to Qila Gill for making this happen.