Ali Al-Fatlawi
BAGHDAD LIVE LIFE, 2008
video, 12’40”
edition 5 +2ap
In this film there are three stages or scenes, each filmed at the same period but it talks about the transformation from dictatorship to war to democracy. These words need to be explained, removed and then reshuffled themselves. The film was made with this same concept in mind, A video collage. In an idea that the Iraqi person who walks in the street needs to stop moving and at the same time continue thinking. Trying to present the inner thinking without the need for the body to move. Just like how freedom and democracy were injected to those bodies without them initiating any of it.
That is why the people in the street become suspended in time and talk about what they are thinking or about what is on their mind or what is present in action without any action.
The length of the film is 12 minutes. The film was entirely shot with a small handheld camera in three different places in Baghdad.
– Mutanabi Street which was bombed later on.
– Tahreer Square which was also bombed by roadside and car bombs
– Al Sadryah, the area of massive explosions in the public market which appears in the film.
Where are the places that weren’t bombed through out memory?
Text by Ali Al-Fatlawi