Medrar Projects Medrar Studio Open Call – Rethinking poor images workshop

Open Call – Rethinking poor images workshop

Medrar Studio

Open Call

Medrar for Contemporary Art

9 July 2016 - 20 July 2016

 Video art and experimental film production workshop 
 led by Louis Henderson & Marouan Omara 

The workshop will take place from 25 July to 15 August 2016 at Medrar.

The workshop targets young filmmakers, video artists, and prior experience in video art making and previous works are not a prerequisite.

Five projects will be selected to be produced during the workshop

The workshop includes sessions, jointly led by Louis Hendersom and Marouan Omara, during which concepts will be discussed, developed and produced. And some of which will be technical on editing, cinematography, animation and production.

The poor image in a confrontation with canned image

In this current moment, where the internet is a massive part of our existence, and social media has influenced how we consume images and media. We see quick reactions to current events, with memes, short video snippets and quickly edited materials filling our timelines which are consumed and shared widely.


“Rethinking poor images” organised by Medrar for Contemporary Art will take on a practical and theoretical approach to examine images without intention. Personal archives, found footage, internet images no matter their quality come into play. Our time together will not fetishise the poor image but rather experiment with unintentional footage and consider what it is and what it can become. Due to the apparent impossibility of making images in public in Egypt, what strategies are there for artistic creation that can work with only images that are available? we will strive to collectively discover a language for these produced images from the workshop that can also go beyond the galleries and into the public sphere.

These thoughts are but some of the workshop’s concerns, and more will develop through the process as the methodology will be one of participation and openness – allowing for the conversation to develop according to the users’ inputs, aims and engagements.

Moderated by award winning filmmaker and author Marwan Oumara and London based filmmaker Louis Henderson, the four week workshop will start with focusing on reading Hito Steyerl’s text on the notion of the “poor image” and looking into archival and original material by the participants themselves. The second week will explore how collectives – such as The Black Audio Film Collective, Video for Example, Ceddo Film and Sankofa- used archival footage in documentary filmmaking. The third and fourth week of the workshop will focus on exploring mobile phone imagery and final production.

Participation 
Participant must commit to attending all the sessions daily from 5 to 9pm.
Participation fee: 100LE
To apply, please fill in the form below and submit it before 20 July 2016. Only selected applicants will be notified by 21 July 2016.

(The application form has been closed, we would like to thank all applicants, and we will notify you by email soon)

 About the Trainers 

This workshop is organized by Medrar for Contemporary Art with the support of the British Council.

Louis Henderson

A filmmaker whose works investigate the connections between colonialism, technology, capitalism and history. A graduate of London College of Communication, Le Fresnoy – studio national des arts contemporains and the experimental research group “Document and Contemporary Art”. His research seeks to formulate an archaeological method within film practice reflecting on animistic materialism. Henderson has shown his work at places such as; Rotterdam International Film Festival, CPH:DOX, New York Film Festival, The Kiev Biennial 2015, The Centre Pompidou, Louisiana museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern and Tate Britain. In 2015 he was the recipient of the Barbara Aronofsky Latham Award for Emerging Video Artist at the 53rd Ann Arbor Film Festival, USA, and a European Short Film Award – New Horizons International Film Festival, Wroclaw, Poland. His work is distributed by Lux (UK) and Video Data Bank (USA).

Marouan Omara

An award winning documentary filmmaker and author, Where his works have a dreamlike notion, overlapping fiction and reality by it’s direct respond to the surrounding and closeness to everyday experiences. Marouan constantly moving on the boundary between documentary and art film, which attracted much attention to his work, not least in several major academic conferences and film festivals. His last film CROP was a huge success.
He currently works as an adjunct professor for film production at the American University in Cairo. Omara was a co-founder & the managing director for the Cairo Industry Forum a parallel program to the Cairo International Film Festival, 2014.
Omara has shown his work at places such as; International Film Festival Rotterdam. Yamagata international documentary film festival. Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival, DokLeipzig, Encounters South African International Documentary Film Festival, Global aCtIVISm – Zentrum fur Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe,The strike of Tanta linen factory at the headquarters of the Federation Workers, Bibliotheca Alexandrina, British Film Institute, Discover Arab Cinema Program. His work is distributed by Arsenal Institut Für Film und Videokunst e.v. Berlin (GERMANY) and TETRAKTYS FILMS LTD (CYPRUS).