Batikh Batikh presents See You at Home No Matter What: New Forms

ABOUT THE EVENT

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Batikh Batikh (BB) is happy to announce its first event of 2025! See You at Home No Matter What, co-presented with cinéSPEAK, is a Lebanese cinema showcase and fundraiser featuring two separate short film programs. For BB’s founder, Lebanese-American curator, Sarah Trad, these events have long been in the making and are the first opportunity where BB has focused exclusively on Lebanese culture and mutual aid. First, New Forms features experimental cinema from Lebanese women artists, including narratives that blend dance, surrealism and general weirdness into their storytelling as well as art video and essay films. The following evening, Queer Cinema will focus on queer narratives by Lebanese filmmakers and host the local guest director and actor from the film To’oborni. Deeply connected to the rest of Bilad-al-Sham, Lebanon has experienced so much since October 7th, 2023 including the constant bombing and use of white phosphorus in its southern lands and Beirut, terrorist attacks against its citizens, an Israeli invasion and the appointment of a new Prime Minister and President. BB will send mutual aid to invest in Lebanon’s infrastructure as well as help those who have been displaced by zionist violence. See You at Home No Matter What is a love letter from BB's Founder/Director to the lands that birthed her family and its hopeful future. 

New Forms - Feb. 7th, DOORS at 6pm, FILMS at 6:30-8pm

Queer Cinema - Feb. 8th, DOORS at 6pm, FILMS at 6:30-8pm

PAYMENT INFO

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All tickets are Pay What You Can (PWYC), and 100% of donations go to mutual aid in Lebanon. You must pre-register for each screening separately. For this particular screening, we ask that anyone looking to donate for the purchase of tickets send directly to Batikh Batikh via the Venmo or Paypal accounts below. Please keep payment confirmation handy so we can check you in at the event! 

PLEASE NOTE: Due to company policies that cancel payments with buzzwords that pertain to the SWANA region, please do not include words like “Lebanon” in the descriptions for Venmo or Paypal. This can lead to our accounts being shut down!! If you want to pay for tickets for the screening please use “Tickets” or “Batikh” in the description. Thank you!!

PAYPAL: [email protected]

VENMO: @sarahmtrad

ACCESSIBILITY INFO:

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This event is indoors. Mask-wearing is REQUIRED. BB will have a HEPA air purifier on site. Asian Arts Initiative is designed as a mobility-accessible facility, with access to all public floors, spaces, and seating accommodations for programmed events. If you are feeling sick or have possibly been exposed to COVID-19, we kindly ask that you stay home.

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

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UNDER MULTIPLE SUNS

Dir. Helene Kazan / 2020 / 15 min

Through testimony and archival evidence ‘Under Multiple Suns’ produces an account

of the little-known history of violence taking place in Lebanon and Syria during WW2.

Soubhi Antonios describes the events, whilst re-encountering its effects on his

bombarded home, revealing the scars they both still carry. Combined with archival

evidence the film foregrounds a contract of risk created by these events, as a

colonial technology imposed through capitalist financial systems and violent conflict.

Exposing a historic legacy of this condition inscribed in the materiality of the lived-

built environment in Lebanon, as a (de)constructed existence ‘Under Multiple Suns’.

MUMMY BLUE

Dir. Daniela Stephan / 2020 / 11 min

Dina, a young Lebanese-British teenager, begins a journey of self-discovery as she

navigates her emerging sexuality. However, her exploration is shaped by her mother’s

deeply ingrained preconceptions about men, rooted in her own traumatic past. As

Dina struggles to break free from these inherited beliefs, her vivid fantasies begin to

blur the lines between reality and imagination. Mummy Blue delves into the

intergenerational transmission of memories, particularly traumatic ones, and

examines their lasting impact on individuals and entire communities.

SEA SALT

Dir. Leila Basma / 2023 / 19 min

On this hot summer day, 17-year-old Nayla is faced with the same dilemma every Lebanese youngster is faced with today – to leave or to stay. Two men in her life have set ideas about it, but both might wake up to a surprise.

MERGING, DISSECTING, COLLECTING

Dir. Joyce Joumaa / 2021 / 7 min

Merging, Dissecting, Collecting is a video work that explores the concept of the reversed gaze. Using the binocular viewfinder that is thought to be a colonial tool, the images interplay between footage that were shot in Istanbul, Turkey and Tripoli, Lebanon. The former being a place where colonization emerged and the latter being a place where colonization was practiced. Juxtaposed with the sound of history lessons from school textbooks which are used in Lebanon, the work aims at revisiting the history of colonization by the Ottoman Empire in present time and how it is interpreted in contemporary educational knowledge.

LES CHENILLES

Dir. Michelle Keserwany and Noel Keserwany / 2022 / 30 min

Asma and Sarah, two women originally from the Levant, find themselves working in the same restaurant in the city of Lyon in France.

THE BATTLE OF EMPTY STOMACHS

Dir. Diana Al-Halabi / 2024 / 23 min

Based on research and interviews with both Palestinian hunger strikers and asylum seekers, this absurdist yet realist film stages a dialogue between the director and her mother tongue that centers on a single question: what do we know about hunger? This film is a poetic and musical tribute to those who suffered the aftermath of famine and migration, and to Palestinian hunger strikers whose resistance outlives the deafening silence of the colonial world

Event Venue

Asian Arts Initiative, 1219 Vine Street, Philadelphia, United States