from Aisha to hip hop

The final project in the documentary film class I took last summer was a 5 min documentary about anything interesting in Amman. My group and I first decided that we want to do it about this lady that passes by our university everyday on her donkey to collect empty bottles and cans. First time we approached her, she asked for 20 JDs and said her name is Fatima. After a couple of times I guess she started trusting us, told us her real name and invited us to her home. Her mother and sister welcomed us warmly to their tent an extra sweet cup of tea. We found out that 30 years old Aisha earns an average of 1 JD a day as she exchanges 1 kilo of empty bottle for 0.25 piaster's from a factory in Baqaa. What's even more unbelievable that that’s the only source of income they got beside the 60 JDs the mother gets from the government which barely covers her medical bills as she suffers from a heart condition.   

Anyways, we agreed on everything and we were looking forward to start the shooting. On the scheduled shooting day we go there at 7 am, all excited, equipment ready then we meet the brother. "The brother" sounds very intimidating but in fact this "brother" is a 12 year old kid that started hurling rocks at us and threatening to call the police because according to him, we want to film his sisters and post everything online which is obviously disgraceful and unacceptable to him, he even threatened to kill his sister. Long story short, we left.

We did this...

Offensive commercial

Birell is a widely popular non alcoholic drink in Egypt that is associated with manhood in the commercial. Last three seconds of the ad clearly shows the way the guy is transformed into a stud after drinking Birell. Most shocking thing about this commercial is the blunt message it's sending through its slogan "A girl's personality is the last thing you notice", or more like the last thing you "should" notice. It is such a gender discriminating, distasteful commercial that reinforces some wide spread negative beliefs. Not only it portrays women as merely sex objects but it also shows men as creatures governed by their desires and instincts showing a completely wrong understanding of real manhood.

Avant Garde: Bruce Conner

Bruce Conner is an American artist born in 1933 in Kansas. He is known for his work in a variety of mediums such as paintings, drawings, prints, collages, assemblages, and sculpture. He began making short movies in the late 1950s. His first film "A Movie" in 1958 is an excellent example of assemblage film. It is a 12 min non-narrative experimental film edited from preexisting and non original newsreel and other old footage.

Another short Avant- Garde film by Conner is the 1967 "Report" that is listed in the book "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die". It consists of found footage of John F. Kennedy's assassination edited with a soundtrack of radio broadcasts of the event. It is said that the film "perfectly captures Conner's anger over the commercialization of Kennedy's death". The flickering black and white screen followed by looping images of the late president and his wife Jackie Kennedy. Conner uses clever juxtaposition of images that might seem ironically random at first but in truth it symbolizes the shock and confusion associated with the assassination. 

Experimental film- Heaven vs. hell

First try in experimental short film. It was done during class duration...

ward wa thekra

from my editing and montage course...

Artist of the day: Firda Kahlo

The broken column-1944

"I paint self portraits because I am the person I know best."

Frida Kahlo was crippled, bisexual and a communist; that right there explains a lot about her paintings. She's a beautiful artist that reflected her pain and misery through her art. The actress Salma Hayek did a great job in playing the role of Frida in a movie about her life. Here's the trailer...

another video "The real Frida Kahlo" from History channel



For more information about her life and art check out her official website http://www.fridakahlo.com/

Still life

from my art classes this summer...

Hollywood’s epic battle

"The Kingdom" starring Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Garner draws inspiration from the 2003 compound bombing in Riyadh. It unfolds a vicious terrorist attack on Saudi compound housing employees of an American oil company. Unsurprisingly, it is yet another one-dimensional Hollywood movie where "Arab Land" is portrayed as an unwelcoming environment of harsh deserts full of fanatically religious or nationalistic terrorists.

In Hollywood’s epic battle between good and evil, it has always been the all American hero saving the day from the villains; weather these villains were Arabs, Russians, Japanese or even Germans. In this post 9 11 world Arabs and Muslims make some of the best generic villains. They are not portrayed as humans and so it is apt to demolish them without a single drop of guilt.

Some might argue they are in away portraying the truth, because after all, most of the Arabian Peninsula is a harsh desert and it holds a lot of anti American extremists. Does that mean that all Arabs are oil billionaires, sheiks, religious fanatics and belly dancers? Many people are inclined to believe that Arabs are hooligans from the 10th century, who like to see Western blood flow. They are portraying a tiny portion of the truth and that’s what generates all those stereotypes.

Of course this is all a mere act of psychological warfare by Hollywood and part of the political agenda. Jack Valenti said: "Washington and Hollywood spring from the same DNA". Indeed, movies do have that prevailing effect on public opinion without people even realizing it. If all those blockbusters don’t instill enough fear from Arabs and Muslims, then another season of 24 will do! Without a doubt, Hollywood and Washington reinforce and react to one another.

Frankly, this is getting far too boring, predictable, and upsetting. Fine, they can reflect the "Arab violence" towards America, but what about they also show some of the American violence towards Arabs in Iraq and Afghanistan for a change.

Ps: I highly recomment watching "Reel bad Arabs" documentary (here)

self portrait: tears and laughter

I did this piece back in 2008, mixed media on canvas and wood. It was inspired from Khalil Gibran's book "Tears and Laughter"

"I would not exchange the laughter of my heart for the fortunes of the multitude, nor would i be content with converting my tears, invited by my agonized self, into clam. It is my fervent hope that my whole life on this earth will ever be tears and laughter."

Utopian Society: Aldous Huxley vs. George Orwell

source: http://www.recombinantrecords.net/docs/2009-05-Amusing-Ourselves-to-Death.html

The dream of forming and maintaining a utopian society was immortalized in two novels dealing with the same basic ideas, 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Although the writers take two different approaches, they both feel the same way about the utopian society. I'm inclined to think that this has to do with the fact that Huxley's novel was written pre world war II while Orwell's was post the war. They explore the impracticality of the utopian ideal. Furthermore, they illustrate the two ways in which governments and those in power control and manipulate the general public.

In 1984 the world is in a state of constant war, no one is free, and everyone is ignorant. The concept of the Big brother was introduced in this novel. "Big brother" is any figure of dictatorship that lulls the people into a false sense of security. Those are the ones who ban books and deprive us from information. "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength." If you tell people a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. As ironic as it is, it's just the sad truth. That is also called “doublethink” which is the deliberate self-deception with which the citizens are encouraged to accept it.

In Brave New World people have chained themselves in front of their television screens to watch a different version of Big Brother. Huxley fears the future will bring too much information, and therefore the truth will be "drowned in a sea of irrelevance". "Drowned in a sea" gives the impression of there being too much of something that makes it easy to lose sight of its true importance. The more people are being sucked into this useless entertainment, the more they become careless and indifferent about what's really important.

In conclusion, people are controlled by either "inflicting pain" or by "inflicting pleasure". I believe that both of these two ideologies are imposed on our modern societies; however, Huxley's way is much more apparent. That is because mass media generally and television screens specifically buzz endlessly with brainwashing propaganda that gets people to act accordingly.