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DANCE FILM OPEN CALL

UNTIL FEBRUARY 15, 2023

Ghazal

Jana Younes & Beirut Contemporary Ballet
Saturday 19. Feb 2022
18:45 GMT+1
Room A
  • Dance Film
Lebanon

| Synopsis

Ghazal in Arabic, is a form of amatory flirt or ode, originating in Arabic poetry. A young woman is either getting ready to leave or coming from a night out. A young man is sitting in his chair, setting up domino pieces. With a sudden power outage, both seem to be triggered by the light left in the space. And what begins doesn’t seem to end, and what ends never seems to have been. There is no such thing, at the level of love, that causes must precede effects. Ghazal is a playful game of time and the direction of its flow.

| Credits

Directed by: Jana G. Younes | Starring: Rebecca Dahrouj & Wafa Bouti | Choreographer: Jens Bjerregaard | Director of Photography: Shadi Chaaban | Steadicam Operator: Christopher Kechichian | Executive Producer: Reine Semaan | Co-Executive Producer: Christelle Younes | Production Manager: Faraj Aoun | Production Assistant: Lewis Semrani | Understudy Dancers: Mazen Nehlawi & Dasha Amer | Light Projections: Elie Noujaim | Art Director: Issa Kandil | Assistant Art Director: Hanady Medlej | Make-up: Richard El gharib | Assistant Director: Genia Boustany | 1st Camera Assistant: Jad Tannous | 2nd Camera Assistant: Lea Skayem | Gaffer: Dany Challita | Continuity: Cybelle Nader | Sound Design & Mix: Cedric Kayem | Music: Toni Geitani | Music Mix: Ziad Moukarzel | Editor: Noel Paul | Online: Miled Boulos | Colorist: Belal Hibri | Making of: Georges Zaydan | Set Photographer: Yara Tayoun

Jana Younes & Beirut Contemporary Ballet

| Biography

Jana G. Younes is a young Lebanese filmmaker who has a keen enthusiasm for movement. She graduated from the St. Joseph University (IESAV) – Beirut after submitting her world-recognized short dance film debut, “Orenda.”

Her infatuation with the duality of cinema and dance started earlier on with her short documentary “Moving philosophy” where she applied Laban Movement Analysis’ theories on the body of the camera, studying the relationship between the two.

Inspired and driven by the early works of moving picture and interpretive dance, she orchestrated another film, “And So Do I,” starring acclaimed choreographer, Jens Bjerregaard, Giulia Barbone, and Shayene Kamel. A film about loss, love, and the inability to forget.

In 2017, she founded alongside Bjerregaard, the Beirut Contemporary Ballet, a collective platform that aims to place Beirut on the international dance map, adaptive to both stage and screen.

The company’s first project “Ghazal,” which Younes directed, Bjerregaard choreographed, and that starred two of the company’s dancers, Rebecca Dahrouj & Wafa Bouti, features a reversed sequence of dance that was created to be flipped.

Jana as a photographer tends to create motion in the stillness of the photograph. Her subjects appear to be moving as if they are going somewhere, appear to be saying something. Her independent project, “dancers revolute,” which she created in response to the garbage crisis in Beirut, caught the public’s attention and the media’s recognition.

Today, her enthusiasm for movement is taking different shapes, using different mediums, and tackling more concrete pathways that explore the mysterious physicality of the mind.

| Biography

Jana G. Younes is a young Lebanese filmmaker who has a keen enthusiasm for movement. She graduated from the St. Joseph University (IESAV) – Beirut after submitting her world-recognized short dance film debut, “Orenda.”

Her infatuation with the duality of cinema and dance started earlier on with her short documentary “Moving philosophy” where she applied Laban Movement Analysis’ theories on the body of the camera, studying the relationship between the two.

Inspired and driven by the early works of moving picture and interpretive dance, she orchestrated another film, “And So Do I,” starring acclaimed choreographer, Jens Bjerregaard, Giulia Barbone, and Shayene Kamel. A film about loss, love, and the inability to forget.

In 2017, she founded alongside Bjerregaard, the Beirut Contemporary Ballet, a collective platform that aims to place Beirut on the international dance map, adaptive to both stage and screen.

The company’s first project “Ghazal,” which Younes directed, Bjerregaard choreographed, and that starred two of the company’s dancers, Rebecca Dahrouj & Wafa Bouti, features a reversed sequence of dance that was created to be flipped.

Jana as a photographer tends to create motion in the stillness of the photograph. Her subjects appear to be moving as if they are going somewhere, appear to be saying something. Her independent project, “dancers revolute,” which she created in response to the garbage crisis in Beirut, caught the public’s attention and the media’s recognition.

Today, her enthusiasm for movement is taking different shapes, using different mediums, and tackling more concrete pathways that explore the mysterious physicality of the mind.