9 min
Sobhi al-Zobaidi
Documentary
2007 - Palestine
Premiere Location
The pictures offer a series of nearly emptied out seascapes, the wide views offering the customary lures of big water dream getaways. On the soundtrack there is a remarkable conversation, which the artist allows to wander through starts and stops, occasionally asking questions about the sea, sometimes slipping into banality and repetition, and then, lured by the intimate domesticity of the scene, the listener is ambushed by the revelation that these voices are Palestinian, and that the horizons on offer are both more tragically particular and more metaphorical, than I could ever know. The sea as national limit, as escape route, as vacation dream, the tropes of this meeting of land and water, this place between, are thoroughly unraveled in the startling juxtaposition of picture and sound.
Screened with Al Almanie (the German) | From Road Movie, a 12 Screen Multi-Media Installation & By Land or By Water: Gaza Under Siege, Drying up Palestine