Tarir Square / unspeakable, 2010
Tahrir Square, where the massive protests in 2011 were met with violence from authorities, is now a symbol of the Egyptian Revolution. In order to pay tribute to the people who fought there, I silently filmed some of them, asking them to replay their most emotional memories of the events.
Social media’s predominant role allowed for simultaneous reporting and organizing, and invented a new paradigm of activism. I collected incredible -sometimes shocking- scenes of personal courage, extreme violence, and collective rage shared online.
Then, I filmed Tahrir Square on a normal day – a vacant lot surrounded by incessant and noisy traffic. An employee was dutifully watering the battered ground, as if trying to grow something out of that aborted revolution.
The silent portraits, the dramatic events, and an ordinary day at Tahrir Square shown simultaneously act as a meditation on the relationship between memories and documents, between individual stories and history, between drama and time, which erases everything.
Multiscreen HD video 8mn 34 Cairo, Sep 2011