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Cinema Muzeul Țăranului -
Thursday, November 7, 2019 - 18:00
Instituto Cervantes -
Sunday, November 10, 2019 - 18:30
Written by:
Monira Al Qadiri
Cinematography:
Monira Al Qadiri
Editing:
Vartan Avakian
Sound:
Fatima Al Qadiri
Producer:
Monira Al Qadiri
Under the guise of a story with spaceships and aliens, THE CRAFT is an allegory of distrust, suspicion, international diplomacy, war and peace and the declining American pop culture. Child's drawings, family photos and visual images shot on VHS make up an eerie background for the author's account of her child fantasies of the biggest alien conspiracy ever, whereby she actually raises dead serious questions about current political and cultural realities. 'Everything is not as it seems.' With her cinematic fantasy, AL QADIRI teaches us to look at the world with the eyes of Saint-Exupéry's Little Prince, who was able to discern the elephant inside a boa constrictor where all the others saw just an ordinary hat. (Adina Marin, BIEFF 2019)
Director:
MONIRA AL QADIRI is a Kuwaiti visual artist born in Senegal and educated in Japan. In 2010, she received a Ph.D. in inter-media art from Tokyo University of the Arts. Her work explores unconventional gender identities, petro-cultures and their possible futures, as well as the legacies of corruption. In 2017, she presented her first live theater performance "Feeling Dubbing" at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels. MONIRA is currently living and working between Beirut and Berlin.
Contact:
monira.alqadiri@gmail.com
Festivals, awards:
International Film Festival Rotterdam - Tiger Short Competition 2018 (World Premiere)
THE CRAFT is a striking work, equal parts memoire, fantasy and science fiction film, which reimagines the last thirty years of Gulf history as a succession of alien invasions – which, in a way, must have been quite a lot like how it felt. Aside from anything else, as AL QADIRI says, “being a woman from Kuwait is not easy. There is always this feeling of wanting to escape.” “But also,” she continues, “as a Kuwaiti you always have to think of a plan B, in case the oil collapses tomorrow, because the country is 90% dependent on oil. I think everyone, in the back of their minds, has a plan to try to leave this place and build a life for themselves somewhere else.” (Interview by Robert Barry for The Quietus)