Gulf Photo Plus Announces Eagerly Awaited Return Of Slidefest, Part Of The 8th Edition Of Reel Palestine 2022!
Gulf Photo Plus’s highly anticipated annual event, Slidefest, returns this February as part of Reel Palestine 2022 film festival’s special lineup of events. Slidefest Palestine will be taking place at The Yard in Alserkal Avenue, on Saturday, 5 February at 7pm. A night of stunning projections and gripping stories from across Palestine, this iteration of Slidefest will be showcasing five projects by five renowned Palestinian photographers. Audiences will get a glimpse into the treasured moments they captured from across the West Bank and Gaza, and will get to participate in conversation with the artists via a moderated Q&A that will be live streamed from their hometowns.
Slidefest is a platform for photographers to engage in meaningful exchange with viewers about their work, and for some, to share new insights on their projects in the process. While photography projects that are in the initial stages of development are often largely unseen by the public until they are tightly edited and refined, Slidefest allows audiences unique access into the process of creating long-term visual projects, and the lived experiences that inform a photographer’s storytelling. Slidefest was first conceived in 2009 and has since attracted thousands of attendees and many emerging and established photographers from across the region and the world. The event has been a launching pad for multiple acclaimed photo projects and films, and has kick started the careers of several young working artists.
“It’s so great to bring our annual Slidefest programming back to Alserkal Avenue’s outdoor venue The Yard. It’s been exciting to see Slidefest grow to become a staple event in Dubai’s art calendar over the years. So far, Slidefest has traveled all over the Gulf, across Saudi in both Riyadh and Jeddah, Bahrain, and has even taken place in Cairo. This year, we’re proud to present the work of five Palestinian artists who are all doing impactful work on the ground. We’re thrilled to partner with Reel Palestine for their eighth edition to highlight these important stories. At GPP, we believe in supporting MENASA photographers who are continuing to push the boundaries of contemporary image-making in the region.” – Mohamed Somji, Director of Gulf Photo Plus.
The featured images will delve into the world of skateboarding culture for youth in Palestine with Maen Hammad, visual stories from Gaza with Rehaf Batniji, gender discourse by Samar Hazboun, compelling photojournalism in Gaza by Samar Abu Elouf, and visual stories from refugee camps in Gaza with Sanad Abu Latifa.
Living in the Dark by Samar Abu Elouf
The project documents the lives of people in the Gaza Strip without electricity over different years, in the street, the city, the camp, and the hospital. It documents the lives of people and children and the impact of electricity cuts on their lives in general, on their educational and academic tasks, and the use of electricity alternatives. I began to focus on the project on the
lives of people on the street without electricity and in the middle of darkness, and now I have reached a very important stage, which is documenting the lives of people whose alternatives to electricity such as candles, kerosene lights and LED lights that run on batteries, have led to fires and the loss of many children to death by burning, Or it led to eternal distortions that negatively affected the lives of these people.
Education in Refugee Camps in Gaza by Sanad Abu Latifa
Education is the only glimmer of hope left for children in refugee camps in Gaza. Their resistance is working hard at school. Their parents, although not educated themselves, encourage and support the children as much as possible. They have pride in the high grades the children obtain. When there is no power, they provide candlelight. When schools close during Covid, families spend the little money they have on wifi cards for children to learn on mobile phones. They travel long distances for their kids to arrive in schools that have become their true refuge from a childhood robbed and a hope for a future reclaimed.
Errant Doves by Samar Hazboun
Errant Doves –the title of which references a poem by the author Ocean Vuong– is a project exploring the emotional state of queer Palestinians following the Covid 19 pandemic in Palestine. While Hazboun’s subjects face both the violence of a colonial Israeli occupation and the rejection of their sexuality within their own communities, Errant Doves highlights their creativity and resolve to forge lives of their own choosing.
Fish by Rehaf Batniji
The English word ‘fish,’ and the Arabic expression “fsh!” (a term that indicates that there is nothing, or that something is missing) come together in this project, their combination yielding some ironic term connoting that there are no fish. Will Gaza‘s fish go extinct?! Hundreds of fish species live in the Mediterranean Sea, while only tens of these species have remained in the sea of this besieged city for over eleven years. Since September 2000, tightened restrictions on Palestinian access to the sea have been enforced through the firing of live ammunition, arrests and the confiscation of equipment – at present, the approved distance from the coast for fishing is three nautical miles. Gazan fishermen risk their lives to be able to sail up to six nautical miles, where they can fish these species, as the leisurely populations of other Mediterranean coastal cities live and carry out fishing practices freely.
Landing by Maen Hammad
Landing is a collaborative look at the purposeful escape that skateboarding provides to a handful of Palestinian skaters, including Hammad himself. This purposeful escape is a radical form of resistance to a headspace of violence, situated in the mundane and explicit layers of
Israeli domination in Palestine. Woven throughout are also tales of his own family’s experience of displacement, diaspora, and partial return.
“I brought my skateboard with me to Palestine in 2014 when I moved back after living 19 years in the US, because I knew I would be a stranger. I needed the kid in me to remind himself that all is well, while I tried to find home. Skating leads us into a parallel world, where we can participate in our surroundings. This participation is an interpretive dance with the built environment, a tool to assemble a community, and most importantly, a centering on the imagination. This project serves as a reminder for this pocket of freedom, as we all try to find our landing. Throughout the project are photos taken by myself, as well as those taken on disposable cameras from the core group of skaters. I simply asked them to photograph the world around them.” – Maen Hammad, Photographer.
