To watch what is not linked below: please request through contact page.
Full List:
- Martyr (Feature; 2017)
- A Petty Bourgeois Dream (Feature; 2016)
- In Search of Stillness (Video - installation; 2015)
- Dans les Bras de Noir (Video - installation; 2014)
- The Still Life Series (Tableaux Vivants - installation; 2015)
- Hypnopompic (Video; 2013)
- My Queer Samsara (16mm Short; 2010)
- A Very Dangerous Man (Short; 2012)
- Our Gentleman of the Wings (Short; 2011)
- Cadillac Blues (Short; 2002)
Martyr
Italy-Lebanon. Feature narrative. 84 minutes. Made with the support of Venice Biennale College - Cinema.
- Venice International Film Festival, September 2nd, 2017 (World/National premiere). Nominated for the Queer Lion Award.
- Rome MedFilm Festival, November 2017.
- Belgrade International Film Festival (FEST18), March 2018.
- South by Southwest (SXSW), March 2018.
- British Film Institute -BFI Flare, March 2018.
- The Subversive Film Festival, May 2018.
- Sicilia Queer Film Festival, May 2018.
- Guanajuato International Film Festival, July 2018.
- Lebanese Film Festival Sydney, July 2018.
- Queer Lisboa, September 2018. Received Queer Art Competition - Jury Prize. Jury statement: "A portentous visual and highly choreographed proposal that affirms itself in the time extension of the images, artistic genres and faiths."
- Arab Film Festival, San Fransisco, October 2018.
- Alexandria Mediterranean Film Festival, October 2018. Received the Mahmoud Abdel Aziz Award for Artistic Achievement, and the Best Actress in a Secondary Role Award for Carol Abboud.
- AFLAM Marseille, April, 2019.
- Lebanese Movie Awards. Nominated for Best Lebanese Motion Picture, Best Writing for Mazen Khaled, Best Editing for Vartan Avakian.
- Soura Film festival Berlin, October, 2019. Opening night film.
Watch Trailer
Some Quotes:
In English
""Masterful, Visceral study of grief." "[...] pure Cinematic Poetry." - Phuong Le, The Guardian
“...[Martyr] deepens into something haunted... the poetry here gets turned up to 10. [...] The writer and director, Mazen Khaled, is painterly with his imagery...” - Wesley Morris, The New York Times
"Meditative Lebanese drama 'Martyr' bathes in the grace of grief and loss: [...] leaves one with the sense that Khaled wishes to reclaim a headline-tainted religious status from the acts of violent men and bestow that mournful grace to people in an everyday struggle with sensitivity and hopelessness." -Robert Abele, The Los Angeles Times
"Martyr is an excellent example of how film form and style reshape the physical realm to create a visual poetry... At the same time, I saw the film as joining the tradition of Kenneth Anger’s Fireworks, Willard Maas’s Geography of the Body, and Stan Brakhage’s Flesh of Morning–a cinematic exploration of the human body as a landscape, bearing traces of how humans live in and through it." -David Bordwell, davidbordwell.com
"Marty [...] manages to bring together sumptuous and contemplative beauty, with a heartbreaking, but simultaneously life-affirming story. It's a striking antidote to the toxic masculinity depicted in Western movies about male bonding and friendship. Khaled elicits such tenderness from his characters one can't help but grieve with them. In addition, it's a film that pushes form in innovate ways mixing handheld footage with a series of tableau vivants and gorgeous underwater photography {...] An undiscovered stunner." -Carlos Aguilar
"The Kind Queer Gaze: [...] exploring the male form from an angle that harks back to a gaze in which Michelangelo carved David: deeply focused study and unabashed reverence." -Xiao Tang, Scenes Journal
"Tender, sensual, fearless filmmaking from Lebanon." -Jim Kolmar, SXSW
"[...] avoids all these tired tropes and delivers something startlingly new and unlike any other gay drama you’ve ever seen." -Daniel Villareal, Hornet.com
"Pushing the boundaries of what is conventionally understood as LGBTQ+ cinema, this is not a gay film in the traditional sense. Instead, this hypnotic and beautifully filmed study of homosocial behaviours and societal ritual is a bold and quietly erotic meditation on the male body, shot with a distinctly queer gaze." - Michael Blyth, BFI
"Martyr is like a Pasolini film: Beautiful and tender, it captures the sacred aspect of bodies, of youth, of male friendship. A remarkable film and one of the best at the 2017 Venice Biennale." -Mark Cousins
"A film on friendship and finding someone’s place in the world. Visually perfect." -Angelo Acerbi, FRED film radio
"Khaled finds the beauty in even the harshest scenes..." -DIFF Journal
"Throughout the film, Mazen Khaled in a tasteful way concentrates on human body, which is used as a vessel to tell the story of fear, grief and lost hope – there is no doubt that there is a raw beauty to it." -Maggie Gogler, viewofthearts.com
"if there’s a future for what we consider the art of cinema, as opposed to the spectacle of the Hollywood franchise picture, it’s in these micro-budget films. Films that attempt to communicate the universal not via corporate-sponsored bromides but through a painstaking and unapologetic specificity. The sense of place put forward by each of these movies is practically palpable. New technology helps make this possible, but all the technology in the world won’t help an uncommitted filmmaker, and these films have both commitment and passion. They all deserve to be seen worldwide..." -Glenn Kenny, rogerebert.com
One of "Thirteen LGBTQI to watch in 2017." -nbc.com
One of the "Most Under Appreciated Movies of 2018" -Indiewire.com
“Martyr [...] will stick with me for quite a while.” -Film Inquiry.com
"[...] highly sensualized visual language. -Jim Quilty, The Daily Star of “Shahid” does not alleviate the film’s stifling air. It accentuates it.
In Arabic
"فيلم... يستحق التوقف عنده، مباركة، وإشادة، وحتى إحتفالاً به."
-جريدة اللواء
"تجسد المراد من الفيلم بنظرات العينين، بالنفس وبقشعرية الجسد حتى خلال الموت، أكثر منه كلاماً وحواراً مسموعاً.ربما هو الصوت المنخفض المرافق للأزمات حين تقبض على خناق المعدمين والمسحوقين" اجتماعياً، قبل الإنفجار." -زهرة مرعي, جريدة القدس العربي
"...شريط سينمائي مبدع في كل جوانبه، خصوصاً النص المُحكم، والممثلين الرائعين واللغة السينمائية المعتمدة." -محمد حجازي, Almayadeen.net
In French
"Loin de l’idée d’un quelconque message social et politique à faire passer, ‘Martyr’ a la densité d’une œuvre artistique. Une œuvre qui privilégie la poésie, le corps filmé tout près de la chair, tout près du silence. Une œuvre où le mouvement épouse étroitement le silence, où la danse se fait cri et où le cri se fait chant, comme une carte postale vivante où tous les sens deviennent palpables à peine l’image effleurant l’écran." -L'Agenda Culturel.com
"...un bel hymne au corps, et un chant d’amour douloureux à la vie." -Colette Khalaf, L'Orient le Jour
Links to Full Reviews:
- By Phuon Le in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/mar/09/martyr-review-masterful-visceral-study-of-grief
- By Wesley Morris in the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/13/movies/martyr-review.html
- By Robert Abele for the Los Angeles Times: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-mini-martyr-review-20181129-story.html
- By Xiao Tang for Scenes Journal: https://www.scenesjournal.com/reviews-1/2018/3/23/the-kind-queer-gaze-martyr
-In L'Agenda Culturel: http://www.agendaculturel.com/Cinema_Martyr_ou_les_plongeurs_de_Ain_el_Mreisse
-By Colette Khalaf, L’Orient le Jour https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/1126228/mazen-khaled-face-a-la-mer.html
- By David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson: www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2017/09/07/venice-2017-college-days/
- By DIFF Journal: dubaifilmfest.com/en/news/25/151382/arab_cinema_shines_at_venice.html
- By Glenn Kenny for rogertebert.com: www.rogerebert.com/festivals-and-awards/venice-2017-biennale-college
- Interview with Angelo Acerbi at FRED radio: www.fred.fm/uk/mazen-khaled-martyr-venezia74/
-By Jim Quilty for the Daily Star: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Arts-and-Ent/Culture/2018/Aug-04/459026-the-martyrs-body-put-under-a-lens.ashx
- By Claire Fulton in Loud and Clear Reviews: https://loudandclearreviews.com/martyr-review/
- By Mansel Stimpson in Film Review Daily: http://www.filmreviewdaily.com/Reviews/Martyr.html
- By Matthew Turner in Vodzilla.com: https://vodzilla.co/reviews/vod-film-review-martyr/
- By Maggie Gogler for viewofthearts.com: viewofthearts.com/2017/09/09/the-74th-venice-international-film-festival-martyr-review/
-Named one of the "Most Under Appreciated Movies of 2018" -Indiewire.com https://www.indiewire.com/2018/12/most-under-appreciated-films-2018-1202024878/?fbclid=IwAR3nTZuwlJGE4euYfiQiE7xYg2fXlkZVQeesDDWTmgyHJBMoDzp8QhPCHrM
- Named as one of thirteen LGBTQI films to watch by nbc.com: www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/13-lgbtq-films-watch-fall-s-blockbuster-film-festivals-n798876
A Petty Bourgeois Dream
Feature narrative.
- Madrid International Film Festival, July 2017. Three Nominations: (Best Original Screenplay of a Foreign Language Feature Film (Mazen Khaled), Best Supporting Actress in a Foreign Language Film (Christine Fawaz Ganni), and Best Director of a Foreign Language Feature Film (Mazen Khaled).
- Festival International du Film Oriental du Genève (FIFOG), April 2017.
- Beirut Cinema Days, March 2017.
- Cannes International Film Festival, Lebanon Goes to Cannes, May 2016.
Visit Website.
Feature narrative.
- Madrid International Film Festival, July 2017. Three Nominations: (Best Original Screenplay of a Foreign Language Feature Film (Mazen Khaled), Best Supporting Actress in a Foreign Language Film (Christine Fawaz Ganni), and Best Director of a Foreign Language Feature Film (Mazen Khaled).
- Festival International du Film Oriental du Genève (FIFOG), April 2017.
- Beirut Cinema Days, March 2017.
- Cannes International Film Festival, Lebanon Goes to Cannes, May 2016.
Visit Website.
In Search of Stillness
January 2015. Experimental/Installation, HD.
Screened at: Body As a Regime - Podrum Gallery, Belgrade Cultural Center, February 5-February 28, 2015. Watch
NOTE: In Search of Stillness has three accompanying tableaux vivants (from The Still Life Series: see below) that ideally would be presented with it as supplementary video channels.
January 2015. Experimental/Installation, HD.
Screened at: Body As a Regime - Podrum Gallery, Belgrade Cultural Center, February 5-February 28, 2015. Watch
NOTE: In Search of Stillness has three accompanying tableaux vivants (from The Still Life Series: see below) that ideally would be presented with it as supplementary video channels.
Dans les Bras de Noir
June 2014. Experimental/Dance, Digital Cinema, 10 min. NOBODY PASSES; Galleri KiT, Trondheim Academy of Fine Arts; 9-11 April, 2015.
June 2014. Experimental/Dance, Digital Cinema, 10 min. NOBODY PASSES; Galleri KiT, Trondheim Academy of Fine Arts; 9-11 April, 2015.
Still Life #4
The Still Life Series
(Series of Six Tableaux Vivants)
February 2015. Experimental/Installation/Performance, HD.
Our bodies are no longer materially confined; they extend beyond to the imagined world through ethereal links; bonds born and sustained by electrical impulses and mechanical vehicles. Those mechanical and electrical machines we have annexed to our organisms have also become internalized into our being. But this becoming of a “fabricated hybrid” was non-consensual. I never agreed to this ontological evolution. Yet, its -still forming- result is indivisible and there is no way I can reject or deny it.
With this ‘evolution’ of the being, something else is changing: demise. Its very nature has been transforming, with the leftover traces individually unfurling and acquiring their own momentum. Where is the essence/nature of this being? Undoubtedly it is spread over the two realms but the place where it can be known is in neither of them. The truth of our natures is in the place where we are perfectly still, where the body is realized as nothing more than a medium of demise. But, again with this ontological ‘evolution,’ stillness is becoming exponentially more difficult to attain. In itself, it can no longer be achieved experientially. The patient, stubborn, and constant trial and error process of trying to be it has to be modified, gazed upon through a flat surface, and spread over an artificial two-fold phenomenon: at once material and mediated.
Borrowing references from the news and from modern and classical art, I set out to develop insight into the connection: life/death/change/revolution/art through a series of videos, tableaux vivants, video installations, performance, and print objects.
N.B. "I have always been fascinated, if not obsessed, with the idea of my death: I'm often imagining it, wondering how it will happen, at almost every little step or turn that I take. By obsessed, I am not referring to fear or negativity, but just the unshakeable feeling that "dying" is equal to "living." From birth, isn't it as true to say that we are dying as to say that we are living? Life and death go hand in hand. There must be moments where death appears in life and vice versa. What's more is that every moment we live, we potentially die and begin anew. How liberating. Can I simply die and be reborn a different entity? Do I hold that power in my hands?"
(Series of Six Tableaux Vivants)
February 2015. Experimental/Installation/Performance, HD.
Our bodies are no longer materially confined; they extend beyond to the imagined world through ethereal links; bonds born and sustained by electrical impulses and mechanical vehicles. Those mechanical and electrical machines we have annexed to our organisms have also become internalized into our being. But this becoming of a “fabricated hybrid” was non-consensual. I never agreed to this ontological evolution. Yet, its -still forming- result is indivisible and there is no way I can reject or deny it.
With this ‘evolution’ of the being, something else is changing: demise. Its very nature has been transforming, with the leftover traces individually unfurling and acquiring their own momentum. Where is the essence/nature of this being? Undoubtedly it is spread over the two realms but the place where it can be known is in neither of them. The truth of our natures is in the place where we are perfectly still, where the body is realized as nothing more than a medium of demise. But, again with this ontological ‘evolution,’ stillness is becoming exponentially more difficult to attain. In itself, it can no longer be achieved experientially. The patient, stubborn, and constant trial and error process of trying to be it has to be modified, gazed upon through a flat surface, and spread over an artificial two-fold phenomenon: at once material and mediated.
Borrowing references from the news and from modern and classical art, I set out to develop insight into the connection: life/death/change/revolution/art through a series of videos, tableaux vivants, video installations, performance, and print objects.
N.B. "I have always been fascinated, if not obsessed, with the idea of my death: I'm often imagining it, wondering how it will happen, at almost every little step or turn that I take. By obsessed, I am not referring to fear or negativity, but just the unshakeable feeling that "dying" is equal to "living." From birth, isn't it as true to say that we are dying as to say that we are living? Life and death go hand in hand. There must be moments where death appears in life and vice versa. What's more is that every moment we live, we potentially die and begin anew. How liberating. Can I simply die and be reborn a different entity? Do I hold that power in my hands?"
Choreography/Dance: Alexandre Paulikevitch and Jadd Tank
Hypnopompic
MAY 2013. Experimental/Dance, HD, 20 min.
- Home Works 6, Beirut, May 2013.
- FORCE OF STILLNESS: Works inspired by Buddhism; The Rubin Museum, November 2016.
Watch.
The term “hypnopompic” refers to the partially conscious state that precedes complete wakefulness, characterized by “dreaming cognition trying to make sense” of reality. The term thus describes a state of being, a transition and a process always taking place in between two moments, two states. Hypnopompic -the video- is a reflection on this in-between state: exposing self-doubt, vulnerability, and lack of fixity, and simultaneously bursting with rash and restraint. The action in the video depicts a pursuit of solid and concrete meaning yet projects a yearning for ethereality. The pas de deux ballet structure comes to mind as a frame for such action. It usually consists of an entrée, adagio, two variations (one for each dancer), and a coda (or tail). Hypnopompic is essentially a pas de deux, albeit an individualistic one, a pas de deux uns if you will.
MAY 2013. Experimental/Dance, HD, 20 min.
- Home Works 6, Beirut, May 2013.
- FORCE OF STILLNESS: Works inspired by Buddhism; The Rubin Museum, November 2016.
Watch.
The term “hypnopompic” refers to the partially conscious state that precedes complete wakefulness, characterized by “dreaming cognition trying to make sense” of reality. The term thus describes a state of being, a transition and a process always taking place in between two moments, two states. Hypnopompic -the video- is a reflection on this in-between state: exposing self-doubt, vulnerability, and lack of fixity, and simultaneously bursting with rash and restraint. The action in the video depicts a pursuit of solid and concrete meaning yet projects a yearning for ethereality. The pas de deux ballet structure comes to mind as a frame for such action. It usually consists of an entrée, adagio, two variations (one for each dancer), and a coda (or tail). Hypnopompic is essentially a pas de deux, albeit an individualistic one, a pas de deux uns if you will.
Marc Pelletier
My Queer Samsara
2010. Experimental, 16 mm, 10 minutes.
- International Film Festival Rotterdam, 2010.
- Cork International Film Festival, 2011.
- NOBODY PASSES; Galleri KiT, Trondheim Academy of Fine Arts; 9-11 April, 2015.
Watch.
Samsara is a Sanskrit word used in Buddhist texts to denote the endless cycle of in-between states; namely birth, life, death and rebirth. It is also used to refer to material life: everyday activities that repeat endlessly. Those activities flash out fleeting illusions of happiness on their shiny attractive surfaces but, in essence, are nothing but forms of suffering. However, integral to the idea of Samsara is that it is breakable. Breaking the cycle happens simply though realization, seeing who we truly are at a given moment in time releases us…
In My Queer Samsara, I set out to discover what is perceived, a stereotype, and to dig vertically down from that stereotype in order to uncover an underlying feeling about who we really are beneath the appearance in relation to that moment.
My Queer Samsara is a critical look at a constructed social identity that hides underneath it a gnawing want, a need to 'go back home'...
2010. Experimental, 16 mm, 10 minutes.
- International Film Festival Rotterdam, 2010.
- Cork International Film Festival, 2011.
- NOBODY PASSES; Galleri KiT, Trondheim Academy of Fine Arts; 9-11 April, 2015.
Watch.
Samsara is a Sanskrit word used in Buddhist texts to denote the endless cycle of in-between states; namely birth, life, death and rebirth. It is also used to refer to material life: everyday activities that repeat endlessly. Those activities flash out fleeting illusions of happiness on their shiny attractive surfaces but, in essence, are nothing but forms of suffering. However, integral to the idea of Samsara is that it is breakable. Breaking the cycle happens simply though realization, seeing who we truly are at a given moment in time releases us…
In My Queer Samsara, I set out to discover what is perceived, a stereotype, and to dig vertically down from that stereotype in order to uncover an underlying feeling about who we really are beneath the appearance in relation to that moment.
My Queer Samsara is a critical look at a constructed social identity that hides underneath it a gnawing want, a need to 'go back home'...
Sélim Mourad
A Very Dangerous Man
Nov. 2012. Narrative, Digital Cinema (Epic), 16 min. Arab Fund for Arts and Culture production grant.
- Dubai International Film Festival, Dec. 2012. Noninated for Muhr Arab Shorts Award.
- Beirut Cinema Days, March 2013.
- Honolulu Film Awards, May 2013.
- Sarajevo Film Festival, August 2013.
Watch.
Beirut, people hate it or love it but few are indifferent to it. Beirut is noisy with traffic, culture, politics, and with the echoes of springs and autumns around it. But it’s also noisy with censorship, graffiti, and dialogues. Indeed, Beirut in itself is a dialogue: multilevel, with a multiplicity of voices resonating into a -sometimes literally explosive- cacophony of meaningless mumbo jumbo.
Alfred Hitchcock maintained that conversations were boring, unless there was a bomb under the table. Is the ever-present bomb under the table what makes Beirut’s conversation interesting? What happens, then, to the dynamics of dialogue? What forms can arguments take? In A Very Dangerous Man, dialogue is never audible, always upstaged by the city’s noise and its vertiginous fast motion. Withholding dialogue augments tension and raises interest in the action, shifting the viewers’ focus from words to images. This shift, just like today’s news videos, entraps viewers, who will look for resolution but find none: no explanation, no beginning, and no end. Viewers are left to their own devices, and have to make (non)-conclusions on their own.
A Very Dangerous Man opens with a series of locations around the Hamra area of Beirut. A montage of its voices: walls and people will present its mood, which is at the same time a result and an instigator of the mood in the Arab world. All around, a hopeful but violent spring is dawning. People are nervous, fearful. Words seem more and more irrelevant. The street and the cityscape are emerging as the heroes of the time, and they speak a new tongue: images its vocabulary, context its grammar. The film then proceeds along two lines: two stories happening at once. A chase. A bag. Are they related? Are they one story? Is there a story? As the action starts, the characters take over, but the attention remains overtaken by the city. Public and private spaces interact and privacy is compromised.
This is the age of images. We are being conditioned to depend on our eyes to develop an understanding of what is happening around us. Discourse has lost its value and has created a vacuum that only action in the streets has been able to fill. A new language is needed in this latest shift in our world. Old narratives and senses exhausted, fresh ones need to develop in order to reconcile into a new paradigm.
The film ends where it started, the men carry on, walking, running. The city swallows them. Beirut, contrary to cities around it, faces the risk of no-change.
Nov. 2012. Narrative, Digital Cinema (Epic), 16 min. Arab Fund for Arts and Culture production grant.
- Dubai International Film Festival, Dec. 2012. Noninated for Muhr Arab Shorts Award.
- Beirut Cinema Days, March 2013.
- Honolulu Film Awards, May 2013.
- Sarajevo Film Festival, August 2013.
Watch.
Beirut, people hate it or love it but few are indifferent to it. Beirut is noisy with traffic, culture, politics, and with the echoes of springs and autumns around it. But it’s also noisy with censorship, graffiti, and dialogues. Indeed, Beirut in itself is a dialogue: multilevel, with a multiplicity of voices resonating into a -sometimes literally explosive- cacophony of meaningless mumbo jumbo.
Alfred Hitchcock maintained that conversations were boring, unless there was a bomb under the table. Is the ever-present bomb under the table what makes Beirut’s conversation interesting? What happens, then, to the dynamics of dialogue? What forms can arguments take? In A Very Dangerous Man, dialogue is never audible, always upstaged by the city’s noise and its vertiginous fast motion. Withholding dialogue augments tension and raises interest in the action, shifting the viewers’ focus from words to images. This shift, just like today’s news videos, entraps viewers, who will look for resolution but find none: no explanation, no beginning, and no end. Viewers are left to their own devices, and have to make (non)-conclusions on their own.
A Very Dangerous Man opens with a series of locations around the Hamra area of Beirut. A montage of its voices: walls and people will present its mood, which is at the same time a result and an instigator of the mood in the Arab world. All around, a hopeful but violent spring is dawning. People are nervous, fearful. Words seem more and more irrelevant. The street and the cityscape are emerging as the heroes of the time, and they speak a new tongue: images its vocabulary, context its grammar. The film then proceeds along two lines: two stories happening at once. A chase. A bag. Are they related? Are they one story? Is there a story? As the action starts, the characters take over, but the attention remains overtaken by the city. Public and private spaces interact and privacy is compromised.
This is the age of images. We are being conditioned to depend on our eyes to develop an understanding of what is happening around us. Discourse has lost its value and has created a vacuum that only action in the streets has been able to fill. A new language is needed in this latest shift in our world. Old narratives and senses exhausted, fresh ones need to develop in order to reconcile into a new paradigm.
The film ends where it started, the men carry on, walking, running. The city swallows them. Beirut, contrary to cities around it, faces the risk of no-change.
Jose Fuca and Mathieu Simard
Our Gentleman of the Wings
2011. Experimental narrative, S16 mm, 15 minutes.
The virgin’s skeleton lies in the dark closet of society, casting spells on it, sticking black as the night pins into its dolls, tormenting it, puppeteering its children. Society’s vision is blurred; its words are weighed down with falsity, its mind is possessed by mediocrity.
Our gentleman just got a new tattoo…
2011. Experimental narrative, S16 mm, 15 minutes.
The virgin’s skeleton lies in the dark closet of society, casting spells on it, sticking black as the night pins into its dolls, tormenting it, puppeteering its children. Society’s vision is blurred; its words are weighed down with falsity, its mind is possessed by mediocrity.
Our gentleman just got a new tattoo…
Kamil Aboul Mouna
Cadillac Blues
Narrative, DV, 26 min. -
- Shams Festival, Beirut, 2002.
- …Né à Beyrouth, Beirut, 2002.
- Reykjavik LGBT Film Festival, 2006.
- Swansea Bay film festival, UK, 2009.
- A Million Different Loves?!, Poland, 2010.
- Guyana LGBT Film Festival, June 2010.
Watch.
Cadillac Blues is the story of three days in the life of two Lebanese brothers, Omar and Ryan. They are close. They live together, sharing the living space, the mobile phone, and a huge old Cadillac.
How do you measure closeness? Is it the same as physical proximity? Omar has a secret nightlife, which has its share of drug content. Ryan has an even bigger secret. Each one of them uses the Cadillac to live out his other life. It is the only space where they can act out their secrets. The Cadillac is vast on the inside, but it’s confined and claustrophobic. The only time we see it from the outside is the night when by the force of circumstance, the brothers are pushed into talking. What will happen when they are faced with the possibility of bringing their lives home?
Narrative, DV, 26 min. -
- Shams Festival, Beirut, 2002.
- …Né à Beyrouth, Beirut, 2002.
- Reykjavik LGBT Film Festival, 2006.
- Swansea Bay film festival, UK, 2009.
- A Million Different Loves?!, Poland, 2010.
- Guyana LGBT Film Festival, June 2010.
Watch.
Cadillac Blues is the story of three days in the life of two Lebanese brothers, Omar and Ryan. They are close. They live together, sharing the living space, the mobile phone, and a huge old Cadillac.
How do you measure closeness? Is it the same as physical proximity? Omar has a secret nightlife, which has its share of drug content. Ryan has an even bigger secret. Each one of them uses the Cadillac to live out his other life. It is the only space where they can act out their secrets. The Cadillac is vast on the inside, but it’s confined and claustrophobic. The only time we see it from the outside is the night when by the force of circumstance, the brothers are pushed into talking. What will happen when they are faced with the possibility of bringing their lives home?
All texts, screen captures, and photos: © mazen khaled 2013