Rehearsals and sound check (video by Rabih el Khoury)
Post-performance discussion (photo by Nour Sokhon)
news
Live performance at Alfilm (Berlin)
I'm looking forward to performing live at this year's edition of Alfilm festival in Berlin, Palestine - A Revised Narrative, a 30 min film I edited from 77 silent short clips shot on 35mm by British Forces in Palestine between 1914 and 1918. A collaboration with Rana Eid (sound design), this visual and sonic essay is a reflection on the British imperial narrative following the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the birth of nation-states in the Middle East.
For more info on schedule and location, please click here
The Watchman at the International Rotterdam Film Festival
One of my favorite films in recent years that I had the pleasure to compose the music for, will be competing at the Rotterdam Film Festival (IRFF) next month. The Watchman by Ali Cherri, or the poetics of beauty, distance and dreams vs the politics of chauvinism, insanity and wars.
To know more about the screenings at the International Rotterdam Film Festival, please click here
Ways of Vanishing
Kingdom - video still
My video Kingdom (2010-2022) is part of Ways of Vanishing, the BIENALSUR video program curated by Nayla Tamraz (LBN) and Florencia Incarbone (ARG), in view at the Sursock Museum from November 25 till the 29th.
Ways of Vanishing brings together works by filmmakers from the Global South, including Latin America, Lebanon, and Turkey. In four sessions, it proposes an aesthetic exploration of the process of vanishing. This unique condition entails the passage from the visible and existence to invisibility, a change of state that projects itself in multiple directions towards a languid disintegration.
The videos and films gathered herein question the ways in which this evanescent condition can be addressed. A culture, an ecosystem, a nation, a people and even a building may vanish in a given period of time or in an instant, but there are always ways of re-emerging, transforming impermanence into an opportunity for transmutation.
For more info on the video program, please click here
Sonic Matter Festival for experimental music
Kingdom - Video still 2
Kingdom - Video still 1
My video Kingdom (2010-2022) will be screened during the Sonic Matter festival, curated by Katharina Rosenberger & Lisa Nolte. The event will take place from November 30th to December 3rd in Zürich.
The festival includes an online platform where my composition for electronics and voice Human Moments In World War III (2018), is part of an eclectic program featuring leading artists in electronic and experimental music.
For more info on the festival program, please click here
Yellow Bus at the Toronto International Film Festival
In Yellow Bus, Wendy Bednarz’s feature debut, an Indian woman living in the Arabian Gulf embarks on a search for truth and accountability after her daughter is left to die on a school bus in the sweltering desert heat. The film is the first one to be shot in the Indian community of Abu Dhabi and is in Hindi, English, Arabic, Urdu, and Tagalog.
I am happy to have composed the soundtrack of this beautiful film that will have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in less than a month.
To know more about the screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival, please click here
Best Music Award
Honored to have received the Best Music Award for the soundtrack of Beirut Hold’em, a film directed by Michel Kammoun, at the Lebanese Movie Awards!
To know more about the festival, click here
Collaboration with ICONEM
Happy to have composed the music for Reminiscence of a Moving City’s Many Stories, a video by Gaël Labousse (ICONEM) for the Sursock Museum in Beirut. ICONEM is an innovative startup that specializes in the digitization of endangered cultural heritage sites in 3D. The video is created out of 30.000 images stitched together in what is considered an outstanding work of contemporary photogrammetry.
In view at the Fouad Debbas Collection Gallery, Level 1 until February 2024.
For more info on the Debbas collection and the video, please click here
Music in Film
Fondation Liban Cinema celebrated Music in Lebanese cinema on Monday April the 24th at the beautiful Fondation Charles Corm with filmmakers and composers.
Filmmaker Vatche Boulghourjian and I (via Zoom) discussed the process of making music for film and our collaboration on recent projects. A conversation moderated by Zeina Saleh Kayali.
Belfast
Thrilled to have been part of the international cultural delegation invited by the British Council for the 25th Anniversary of the signing of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. The program included meetings, talks and conferences by local and international artists, as well as concerts and screenings exploring the meaning of peace and moving forward in a city still dominated by the looming presence of the Belfast dividing wall.
Finalizing Sound and Music for Yellow Bus
Yellow Bus is the first feature film in Hindi, Urdu, Arabic and English shot in the Hindu community of Abu Dhabi and written and directed by Wendy Bednarz.
I am happy to have composed the soundtrack of this beautiful film that we just finished mixing with Lama Sawaya at DB Studios Beirut.
Beirut Cinema Platform Mentorship
Every year, Beirut Cinema Platform (BCP) offers the opportunity for Arab independent filmmakers and producers working on feature-length films to meet with film professionals from around the globe to build partnerships, collaborations, and co-productions.
As a music mentor, I was happy to discuss The Last Man with filmmaker Muhammad Salah and producer Mark Lotfy from Egypt. The Last Man got awarded the CNC cash prize at the BCP 2023 edition.
For more info on the 2023 edition, please click here
Morse Code Composition at Alte Schmiede, Vienna
10 years after its first performance at Irtijal Festival by Alessandra Rombola (flute) and Esteban Algora Aguilar (accordion), Morse Code Composition will be performed by Maria Mogas Gensana and Audrey G. Perreault at Alte Schmiede, Vienna on December 21st, part of the second volume of A room of one‘s own program by the Between Feathers Ensemble. The program includes music from female composers from Japan, the United States, Poland, Lebanon, Denmark and England.
Program:
Yu Kuwabara. Doll-Blind b‘. (2007/2012). Flute and accordion with projection of Rebecca Akoun‘s animation.
Kristina Wolfe. Dukh. (2013). Soprano, flute, accordion and electronics.
Lisa R Coons. Essay I: Mater (2019). Soprano, alto flute, accordion and electronics.
Agata Zubel. Unisono II (2004). Soprano, accordion, electronics.
Rebecca Saunders. O Yes & I (2018). Soprano and Flute.
Cynthia Zaven. Morse code composition. (2012). Flute and accordion.
Kirstine Lindemann. Further and Back. (2015). Open instrumentation.
Oslo snapshots
Ultima Festival 2022
Looking forward to being in Norway for Ultima, Oslo’s Contemporary Music Festival!
The Neue Vocalsolisten will perform the Voice Affairs program that includes my piece for 6 voices, Madrigal d’Essilio on September 20th, at the Kulturkirken Jakob.
For more info on the Ultima Festival 2022 program, please click here
