In the Eyes of Syrians: Double Vision and Sugar Cage Screening

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In Collaboration with Ettijahat - Independent culture, Celebrating Syria invites you for an evening that will transform you to Syria. The two films Double Vision and Sugar Cage, followed by a post-screening discussion with the filmmakers.

Double Vision, 2021, 25 min, Arabic with English subtitles

A documentary that follows and expands the map of the Syria-Lebanon rally that began in 1974 and later ended abruptly due to war. The film uses different media, such as animation and documentary material filmed between 2008 and 2011, along a path that runs parallel to that of the rally. The map ends at the meeting point of the two paths, where everyone encountered along the way joins the rally team, including the army, belligerent parties and owners of rest stops.

Sugar Cage, 2019, 60 min, Arabic with English subtitles

In an attempt to record a standstill time, Zeina Al Qahwaji trains her camera to examine the intimate life of her ageing parents over the course of 8 years since the beginning of a civil movement followed by a war in Syria. Observing scenes of isolation, fear and stagnancy that overshadow life at home. Yet they are still equated with enough sensibilities and love bonding them together against the heaviness of time and war.

Ibraheem Ramadan is a Syrian visual artist born in Damascus in 1981. He studied Information and Journalism at the University of Damascus, but he has instead been working in animation since 2006 with Star Animation Studios in Syria. He initially worked as a storyboard artist and later as an art director in 2009, before becoming an independent filmmaker. In 2012, Ramadan moved to Lebanon to pursue his career as a visual artist with several organisations, including BBC Media Action, Al Jazeera Documentary Channel and Asala Publishers. He then moved to France, where he worked with Amnesty International. In his artistic work, Ramadan merges documentary and fictional material and resorts to crossover between reality and animation, particularly through the stop-motion technique. He often uses automobiles as the main axis and protagonists of his films and presentations. In 2017, Ramadan began writing Double Vision, a short multimedia film. He has been living in France since 2018.

Zeina Al Qahwaji is a Syrian documentary filmmaker.  She started working in the documentary film industry in 2010. In 2017, she obtained her master degree in documentary filmmaking at the DOC NOMADS Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree program. She has recently completed her first feature length documentary Sugar Cage, and she is in the process of developing her next feature.

Credits

Double Vision:

Director: Ibraheem Ramadan

Scriptwriters: Mohammed Muhktar, Ibraheem Ramadan, Julia Bruton

Producer: Julia Bruton, Ibraheem Ramadan

Voice over: Masa Zaher

Mastering and sound design: Maen Rajab

2D animator: Sawsan Nourallah

Sugar Cage

Director: Zeina Al Qahwaji

Screenwriter: Zeina Al Qahwaji

Producer: Ali Hamoud, Zeina Al Qahwaji

Cinematographer: Zeina Al Qahwaji

Editor: Raya Yamsha

Sound design: Raed Younan