Dreams & Borders

With a triptych of short films she selected, Fairuz Ghammam guides us from Syria to Tunisia and eventually to a Texas university.

1. Step by Step 
by Ossama Mohammed
(1978, SY, black & white, Arabic spoken, English st, 23’)
Ten years before filmmaker Ossama Mohammed received international recognition with Stars in Broad Daylight (1988), he captured the dire state of Syria in this short documentary. The film starts off hopefully enough, with different village children talking about their dream jobs. But it soon becomes clear that such innocent candor will be short-lived. Through the film’s experimental, fragmented style, reminiscent of the French New Wave, harsh reality bubbles ever closer to the surface.

2. Bamssi by Mourad Ben Amor

(2024, TU/BE, Arabic spoken, English st, 26’)

The road, the house, the key, the animals, Bamssi. Images with the urgency of an Instagram story create a dialogue within the family across the sea: Mourad and Fairuz, Tunisia and abroad. You have to go to the roof to see something of the surroundings: the railway behind the house. Away from the house, away from home. Street dogs and cats in front of the house. Without a house, without a home. The sound of the train carries a disturbing longing. The image of the sea opens up a dangerous desire. To stay. To dream. Time passes both slowly and quickly when the possibility of new life disrupts the routine.

3. The Trip by Eileen Myles
(2019, US, color, English spoken, 21’)
“Are we a tumbleweed?” The Trip is a road trip movie through the majestic, rough-hewn landscape separating Texas towns Marfa and Alpine with poet Eileen Myles as your guide. Inspired by Jack Kerouac’s spoken score of Robert Frank’s 1958 poetic classic Pull My Daisy, Myles discusses daily life and political realities with their childhood puppets, Oscar, Bedilia, Montgomery, Casper, and Crocky. After a deep sleep of 60 years, they awaken from their old picnic basket. They express their dreams and life questions for the future.

Followed by a Q&A with Mourad Ben Amor in Tunis