Congress of Idling Persons
↳ Bassem Saad
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LB / DE 2022, 00:36:00
The film features five interlocutors who play themselves and greater fictions, in the shadows of recent world-historical events. Artist and writer Bassem Saad, DJ and translator Rayyan Abdel Khalek, musical artist Sandy Chamoun, writer Islam Khatib, and organiser Mekdes Yilma examine a cartography of protest, crisis, humanitarian and mutual aid, migrant labour, and Palestinian outsider status. Punctuated by the late Arab Spring, the Black Lives Matter revolts of 2020, and the Beirut port explosion, the film weaves through transhistorical constants – from rage and mourning to spontaneity and besiegement – propelled by the speech and acts of its performers. If a group action is a riot and not a revolution, then who films it? If four is a riot, it is also a congress.