MAEVE BRENNAN

In the film The Drift, Maeve Brennan traces the “activity” of objects in Lebanon. As she draws the portraits of Mohammad, a young mechanic, Hashem, a conservator in archeology, and Fakhry, the gatekeeper to the Roman temples of Niha, Brennan momentarily captures the life of objects that have been stolen, abandoned, or destroyed in hostile environments. Hoarded, fragmented, or forgotten, things give, as it were, meaning to her subjects: the relationships that have been woven between these objects and these individuals become performative memories that reactivate functions or renew potentialities of both objects and people. Transpiring through the documentary sequences and staged scenes is a deep desire for reconstruction and repair.