Aïnata

The screening of Aïnata by Alaa Mansour is part of a longer film program of Home Works 9 by Ashkal Alwan.

Aïnata
Dir. Alaa Mansour, 2018
63’, Lebanon
In Arabic with English subtitles

“Maybe that place doesn’t even exist. Maybe it only exists in an imaginary film that remains unresolved. Here we are in Aïnata, in the south of Lebanon. History is to be told, and its stories to unfold into a territory where the archaeology of times owes its survival to fiction.”

Through the use of archives and the process of editing, Aïnata unfolds into a multi-layered exploration of micro-histories, revealing a dissonant account of wars and victories. With its hybrid approach, the film oscillates between oneiric drifting of the imaginary and the hegemonic symbols of ideology and conflict.
 
Alaa Mansour (b. 1989, Lebanon) is an artist, filmmaker, and archivist based between Beirut and Marseille. Her work focuses on the history of violence and the power of images in the age of necropolitics. Using a multidisciplinary approach, she explores concepts of the sacred and the sublime and their potential in horror. She graduated from Université Paris VIII with a Masters in Creation and Filmmaking (2013). Her films The Mad Man’s Laughter (2021) and Aïnata (2018) have been screened internationally at Visions du Réel, Transmediale, European Media Art Festival and Impakt.