Metropolis’ Cinematheque Beirut project launches The Second Encounter film festival. Catch Scenes of Extraction at AIF’s Shared Auditorium, followed by a discussion with director Sanaz Sohrabi moderated by Vartan Avakian (online, in English).

Scenes of Extraction
by Sanaz Sohrabi
2023, 43'

Farsi with English subtitles

“Scenes of Extraction” creates an archival constellation with the still and moving images of British Petroleum Archives, documenting the expansive colonial network behind the British geophysical expeditions that spanned across Iran, but also reached other British oil operations in South East Asia. The film focuses on the parallel production of geological and ethnographic surveys, both through amateur geological footage and official technical film surveys produced by BP. It weaves through decades of archival documents to parse out the visual history of the “Reflection Seismography” method for oil exploration which was heavily tested across the Iranian oil belt despite its destructive and probable nature. Situated at the nexus between science and technology studies and media archaeology, the film traces the technical legacy of these geophysical methods that are still used in deep-sea mining and are the backbone of the global energy complex. By blending the archival and speculative modes of representing the geological past, “Scenes of Extraction” reveals the gaps and discrepancies between the archival and lived histories of extraction and the ecological ruination of its aftermath. 

The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture is organizing a book signing featuring Salih Basheer and Heba Khalifa, two alumni of its Arab Documentary Photography Program.

Through photography, text, and archival material, these books, spanning Khartoum to Cairo, explore themes ranging from private wounds to collective healing. The Return by Salih Basheer and Tiger’s Eye by Heba Khalifa both confront violence, silence, and survival through deeply personal visual storytelling.

Copies of the books will be available for signing at the event.
 

The Cooperative of Cinema Professions is launching a movie night every other Thursday at AIF’s Shared Auditorium. 
Starting with A Man Vanishes by Shōhei Imamura
1967, 130'
Japanese with English Subtitles

At the end of the 1960s, Japan was affected by a wave of unexplained disappearances, with many people going missing without a trace over the years. Shōhei Imamura, who until then had explored the dynamics of Japanese society and the behavior of its members through fiction, turned to documentary filmmaking with A Man Vanishes.