The Film Club LIVE: Up to the South

The program is a co-production between Re:Orient and Moderna Museet.

Talaeen a Junuub (Up to the South) (1993)

By Jayce Salloum and Walid Raad
60 min

An oblique, albeit powerful documentary that examines the current conditions, politics, and economics of South Lebanon. The tape focuses on the social, intellectual, and popular resistance to the Israeli occupation, as well as conceptions of “the land” and culture, and the imperiled identities of the Lebanese people. Simultaneously, the tape self-consciously engages in a critique of the documentary genre and its traditions.

On the filmmakers

Walid Raad

Raad began his artist career in the late 1980s and has worked primarily on three major projects: The Atlas Group, Sweet Talk: Commissions, and Scratching on things I could disavow. These projects are closely linked to his experiences of growing up in Beirut during the civil war in Lebanon, moving to New York, and having an emerging career in a globally expansive art world.

Raad engages how violence affects bodies, minds culture and tradition. In his photographs, videotapes, sculptures, texts and mixed media installations, Raad proceeds from historical events to imagine seemingly ludicrous, bizarre, and wondrous situations and documents.

Jayce Salloum

Salloum was born in Canada in 1958, the grandson of Lebanese immigrants. Salloum’s artistic practice exists within and between the personal, quotidian, local, and the trans-national. While he has lived in many locales Salloum currently resides in Vancouver, Canada.

His work engages in an intimate subjectivity and discursive challenge while critically asserting itself in the perception of social manifestations and political realities. He has worked in installation, photography, drawing, performance, text and video since 1978, as well as curating exhibitions, conducting workshops, and coordinating a vast array of cultural projects.

Introduction and conversations

The film is introduced by Fredrik Liew, curator of the exhibition Walid Raad: let’s be honest, the weather helped. He will talk about Walid Raad’s background and the exhibition whose central theme is how violence, wars and crises affect bodies, minds, objects and culture.

After the film, the Lebanese writer and poet Alexandre Najjar, Beirut, who among other things wrote the book ” The School of War” (2009), talks with curator Catrin Lundqvist, Moderna Museet. The conversation that is live streamed revolves around the film and the book and how war and violence can be interpreted and experienced in different ways.
If you want to ask them any questions, use the chat on Moderna Museet’s YouTube channel.

Alexandre Najjar

Najjar was born in Lebanon in 1967. He is an attorney-at-Law, a literary critic and one of Lebanon’s finest contemporary writers. He is the director of L’Orient littéraire and a former advisor to the Lebanese Ministry of Culture (1999-2009). He has won many prizes and awards, and has more than 30 publications in French and Arabic translated into 12 languages. His books include ”The School of War” (translated into Swedish), ”Gibran Khalil Gibran: A Biography”, ”The Silence of my father”, ”Berlin 36”, ”Harry and Franz”, ”Le Roman de Beyrouth” and ”Dictionnaire amoureux du Liban”.

Fredrik Liew

Fredrik Liew is Head of the Curatorial Team and Curator of Nordic Art from 1973 in Moderna Museet, and curator of the exhibition ”Walid Raad: Let’s be Honest, the Weather Helped”.

Catrin Lundqvist

Catrin Lundqvist is curator at Moderna Museet.