They Do Not Exist (Laysa lahum wujud)
Abu Ali Mustafa
Arabic with English subtitles
1974, 25 min

Directed by Mustafa Abu Ali in 1974, They Do Not Exist takes its title from the infamous Golda Meir quote. Abu Ali, one of the first Palestinian filmmakers and founder of the PLO’s film division, began making films in 1968 in Jordan, along with Sulafa Jadallah and Hani Jawhariya. After Black September, Abu Ali and the others had to leave Jordan but continued making resistance films in Lebanon.

Abu Ali’s contribution to Palestinian cinema is significant, as well as his contribution to international cinema. He worked with Jean-Luc Godard (who apparently has said his soul is Palestinian) on the film Ici et Ailleurs. Godard is “a great filmmaker; dedicated, creative and imaginative. We were both concerned to find the right film language appropriate to the struggle for freedom,” says Abu Ali.

Watch They Do Not Exist on UbuWeb

February 10, 2010 at 6:30 PM
NYU Abu Dhabi Institute: 19 Washington Square North, New York

Historian Omnia El Shakry outlines recent trends in contemporary artistic production in and about the Middle East, while critically exploring the prevalence of binary understandings of the region as trapped between local ethno-nationalisms and global neo-liberalisms, or between politics and aesthetics.

Omnia El Shakry Associate Professor of History, University of California Davis

This event is part of Romanticide: Love, Loss and Co-dependency in Art and Cultural Politics, a NYU Abu Dhabi Lecture Series in New York City co-sponsored by Bidoun.

FOXP2
Wednesday, January 27th at 6:30 PM
NYU Abu Dhabi Institute: 19 Washington Square North, New York

Please join Bidoun and NYU Abu Dhabi next Wednesday for FOXP2, an event moderated by Clare Davies. FOXP2 is a dérive in the spatial and mental fields usually ascribed to a lecture. Constantly shifting back and forth between the authorial voices of a politician, a naturalist, and an art historian, the lecturer drifts between the passionate and the irrational, stopping at various stations of historical, artistic, socio-political, and personal significance. This event will include performances by Bassam El Baroni, Curator, Co-Director of the Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum and Manifesta 2010; and Kenny Muhammad, known as “the human orchestra.”

Space is limited. Please RSVP to 19wsn.rsvp@nyu.edu.

This event is part of Romanticide: Love, Loss and Co-dependency in Art and Cultural Politics, a NYU Abu Dhabi Lecture Series in New York City co-sponsored by Bidoun.

Bidoun is sad to learn that Bahman Jalali passed away on Friday at the age of 65 in Tehran. Jalali was not only a photographer who captured the Iranian Revolution and the war that would ensue, but was also an avid and keen photo collector, as well as a beloved professor of photography whose legacy continues to be seen in the generations who followed him. We salute him and his memory.