Offing

What narratives escape the frame of war, and how do those bearing witness, in turn, consume media? Offing, re-focuses the lens on the tender and the mundane as acts of life, and re-centers relationality as a way into the unrenderable essence of sound and subjectivity. Employing the spoken online voice of artist Salman Nawati, against footage shot by Toukan outside of Gaza, the film departs from the summer 2021 war on Gaza.

Directed by

Oraib Toukan

2021 | 28 min | Arab (st. English)

Filmmaker’s country : United States
Country of filming : Palestine

Co-curated with Regards Palestiniens.

*The session will be followed by a discussion with:

Nada El-Omari, a filmmaker and writer of Palestinian and Egyptian origin based in Montreal, Quebec. Her practice and research focus on the intergenerational transmission of memory, displacement, and stories of belonging and identity, which she explores through a poetic and hybrid lens.

Muhammad Nour El Khairy, a Palestinian filmmaker, videographer, film programmer, and editor originally from Jordan, currently based in Tio’tia:ke (Montreal). His work is driven by an understanding of moving images as complex living systems, whose political reach goes beyond representational capacity to include their funding, production, and distribution.

Moderated by Nayrouz Abu Hatoum, a professor in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Concordia University. She is currently working on an ethnographic project examining the politics of visual arts and the role of artists in expanding Palestinian imagination. Nayrouz Abu Hatoum is a founding member of Insaniyyat, the society of Palestinian anthropologists.