Batikh Batikh presents See You at Home No Matter What: Queer Cinema

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 our 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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THE RUINS

Dir. Raed Rafei / 2021 / 15 min

A drawing of an ancient bathhouse in a French travel book to the Middle East sparks a visual poem, inspired by the Arab poetry tradition of "standing by the ruins." The ambivalence of the five-hundred-year-old image gestures towards enduring capitalist and colonial power dynamics. Pleasure and pain, seduction and domination, archives and ruins, histories of sex, and histories of empire, all come together in this essay film. What transpires is a web of visible and invisible threads where homosexuality in the Middle East today seems to be enmeshed.

EVERYTHING IS EASY, EVERYTHING IS HARD

Dir. Pamela C. Saade / 2023 / 6 min

Omar, a Lebanese guy living in Paris, returns with Alex from a date. He seems a bit disconnected, a little game with Alex makes him burst and talk about all that he’s going through abroad.

TO’OBORNI

Dir. L.B. / 2023 / 12 min

Tensions rise at home when Salma's family braces for a visit from Lebanese relatives. After not having seen them in over 20 years, her mother and teta return to Middle Eastern traditions in order to impress. However, as a high school senior struggling with her own identity, Salma must choose between being the daughter her mother wants to present to them, and being herself.

SULTANA’S REIGN

Dir. Hadi Moussally / 2024 / 10 min

Sultana of New York is a Palestinian drag queen, performer, and artist. "Sultana’s Reign" opens with a conversation with Sultana, as she is being painted by Jordanian artist, RIDIKKULUZ. Reflecting on her journey from Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, to then New York, Sultana tells of the challenges of performing drag in conservative societies, her nostalgia for the glory days and the glamour of Egyptian cinema icons, and her struggle to prove her existence and her self-expression as a performer and artist. She also shares her love of celebration and her everlasting commitment to be true to herself.

IN CASE OF CONSCIOUS INHIBITION, BREAK GLASS

Dir. Hadi Ibrahim / 2024 / 15 min

The film follows a young adult who struggles with his sexual identity. His inner conflict reaches a peak when he attends a party with his mysterious female companion.

FRESCOES OF A RUINED MEMORY

Dir. Adnan Kayssi / 2023 / 19 min

Kamal and Jad, two men in their twenties, live together in an apartment. Kamal, haunted by his nightmares, projects his fears onto his boyfriend, Jad. Their relationship becomes increasingly unstable until one of them realizes he can no longer continue. In the end, he leaves for another city.

NEO NADHA

Dir. May Ziadé / 2023 / 13 min

Mona, a young woman in London, finds archived photographs of Arab women cross-dressing in the Middle East in the 1920s. Somewhere between her fantasies and reality, she starts a feverish journey of uncovering lost histories and her own identity. Through a coming-of-age narrative, the film explores the euphoric relationship those who are marginalised create with images and symbols, and how archive images can be a portal for the world of inner projections, creating meaning and grounding one's identity.

Host or Publisher cinéSPEAK