...In 1948,
The Israelites walked in the water towards the Promised Land.
The Palestinians walked in the water to drown.
Shot and reverse shot. Shot and reverse shot.
The Jewish people join fiction.
The Palestinian people, the documentary.
(Jean-Luc Godard, Notre Musique)

In Conversation With An Imagined Israeli Filmmaker Named Avi Mograbi, Akram Zaatari attempted to write, improvize and restitute his conversation with an imagined Israeli filmmaker who he named Avi Mograbi. It was performed at the Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers in April 2010 and will be transcribed into a book to be released in the beginning of 2011 (in French, English, Arab and Hebrew). During his residency, Akram Zaatari pursued his long-term work about objects and personal documents linked to the history of Israel wars against Lebanon, through researching letters, photographs, personal stories by former Lebanese prisoners in Israel, which the artist then presents in his videos, conferences and photographies. The artist notably questions the encounter between a subjective and personal history and violent historical events. Around this Conversation, Akram Zaatari presented film projections, a reading and an exhibition of documents, thus contextualizing the idea of this script.

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The residency of Akram Zaatari in Les Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers was supported by the Département de la Seine-Saint-Denis. Les Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers thanks the Kadist Art Foundation for its kind support