• The Mother and the Dogs

  • Rejoice in Raqqa

Abounaddara Shorts

In Conversation

  • Charif Kiwan is a founding member of the anonymous video collective Abounaddara. Abounaddara (“the man with the movie camera”) is a Syrian filmmakers’ collective that has been working anonymously since its founding in Damascus in 2010.

  • Stefania Pandolfo is a Professor of Anthropology and is in the Medical Anthropology Program and the Program in Critical Theory at UC Berkeley.

  • Anneka Lenssen is an Associate Professor in the Department of the History of Art at UC Berkeley.

Characterized by stunning montage and unsettling encounters, Abounaddara’s short films depict people in dialogue with themselves and others amid the intimate revelations of a society undergoing transformation, revolution, and civil war. An anonymous collective of filmmakers established in Damascus, Syria, in 2010, the group attuned its cameras to signs of radical possibility in the everyday. This curated program accompanies the opening of the exhibition Abounaddara: The Ruins We Carry, drawing from Abounaddara’s living archive of nearly three hundred shorts made between 2010 and 2017. Selections disclose animating themes within the group’s utopian realist oeuvre, among them questions of image makers and creation, of life and death during revolution, and of illumination in war. 

—Stefania Pandolfo and Anneka Lenssen

Films in this Screening

Believers without Borders

Syria, 2010

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • Color
  • Digital
  • 5 mins
source
  • Abounaddara

The Smiters for Damascus

Syria, 2010

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • Color
  • Digital
  • 5 mins
source
  • Abounaddara

The Old Man and Jihad

Syria, 2010

FILM DETAILS 
Language
  • Arabic
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • Color
  • Digital
  • 5 mins
source
  • Abounaddara

The Mother and the Dogs

Syria, 2010

FILM DETAILS 
Language
  • Arabic
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • Color
  • Digital
  • 5 mins
source
  • Abounaddara

Then What?

Syria, 2011

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • Color
  • Digital
  • 2 mins
source
  • Abounaddara

I Will Cross Tomorrow

Syria, 2012

FILM DETAILS 
Language
  • Arabic
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • Color
  • Digital
  • 4 mins
source
  • Abounaddara

So It Was Made to Appear to Them

Syria, 2013

FILM DETAILS 
Language
  • Arabic
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • Color
  • Digital
  • 3 mins
source
  • Abounaddara

Marcel—Part 2

Syria, 2014

FILM DETAILS 
Language
  • Arabic
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • Color
  • Digital
  • 2 mins
source
  • Abounaddara

Marcel—Part 3

Syria, 2014

FILM DETAILS 
Language
  • Arabic
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • Color
  • Digital
  • 3 mins
source
  • Abounaddara

The Islamic State for Dummies—Part One

Syria, 2013

FILM DETAILS 
Language
  • Arabic
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • Color
  • Digital
  • 3 mins
source
  • Abounaddara

Rejoice in Raqqa

Syria, 2016

FILM DETAILS 
Language
  • Arabic
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • Color
  • Digital
  • 4 mins
source
  • Abounaddara

The Fly

Syria, 2015

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • Color
  • Digital
  • 2 mins
source
  • Abounaddara

The Battle of Aleppo

Syria, 2016

FILM DETAILS 
Language
  • Arabic
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • Color
  • Digital
  • 10 mins
source
  • Abounaddara

Of Gods and Dogs

Syria, 2014

FILM DETAILS 
Language
  • Arabic
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • Color
  • Digital
  • 13 mins
source
  • Abounaddara

Event Accessibility

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