CLEBS / BUGS AND BEASTS BEFORE THE LAW / WHO IS AFRAID OF IDEOLOGY?

Filmed over several years, this project by Lebanese filmmaker Marwa Arsanios observes eco-feminist practices as way to investigate the impact of conflict zones on our relationship with nature. Female soldiers in the mountains of Kurdistan; the women of Jinwar, an all-women village in northern Syria; and lastly the many refugees from a Lebanese cooperative located on the Syrian border. Giving voice to these women, and attentive to the lands in which they are developing their ideas, the film describes initiatives born of the need to survive in war-torn environments. We are invited to think differently about our resource exploitation and its impact on our eco-political models.

In the Middle Ages, strange trials and surrealistic executions took place before courts and crowds. The convicted parties were not people, but pigs, insects, roosters. Bambitchell, the creative duo of Sharlene Bamboat and Alexis Mitchell, looks into this curious use of the rites of justice. Gradually, the film transforms: images are altered, the music disrupts the historical review, while cruel injustices against animals take on a new dimension, revealing a monstrous reflection of human justice and institutionalized discrimination. The fantastical essay has a distinct political flavour as it looks to the past to shed light on the present.

The animals’ brown, beige, white and black coats blend into the ochre earth and sunbaked walls. After the calm of rest hour, a deafening cacophony breaks out at feeding time, as the dogs bark excitedly. In a stray-dog refuge in Agadir, Morocco, more than 750 animals find help and protection while awaiting adoption. Each day is the same as the last, the only excitement provided by mealtime. Empathetic and alert to subtleties of light and texture, Halima Ouardiri observes the rhythm of the animals’ lives, their suspended existence paralleling the far more tragic waiting endured by millions of human beings in search of a new home.