Cinema Suitcase is an international group of filmmakers pursuing projects of experimental social documentary. Coming from a diversity of fields in the visual arts, they seek to facilitate the self-narration of their subjects, always encountered on the basis of a great intimacy, rather than constructing their stories for them. This approach enhances the performative quality of filmmaking as a collective process.
Nothing is Missing, 4-screen video installation, 22 to 35 min,2006
Colony, digital video, 2006
Mille et un jours, digital video,44 min,2004/2006
Access Denied,digital video,32 min,2004
The 4-screen video installation \’Nothing is Missing\’ attends to the people never talked about, all but invisible, who most poignantly suffer the loss of the departure of migrants from their communities: the mothers. \’Colony\’ is a tale of a lost system of production, of colonization and hierarchy and the politics surrounding the work of individuals whose lives became entwined in a global vision. The film opens but does not answer the question so crucial to the contemporary world: is the overcoming of colonialism ever able to avoid neo-colonialism? The film is political in its critical presentation of both past ideals and contemporary alternatives. Two films, made by the collective, explore the impact of the current repressive politics of migration on individual lives (\’Mille et un jours\’; \’Access Denied\’). While the former film is an experimental narrative that balances classical form with Arabic tradition, and a joyful present with recent and past trauma, the latter film also questions the ways this political climate affects the possibility to make art.
