Lamia Joreige: And the living is easy


  • Lamia Joreige, And the living is easy, 2014, 74 min.


Screening

  1. May 4, 2017, 6 – 8 pm
Level 0, Lecture Hall


Lamia Joreige, current 2016–17 Radcliffe Institute Fellow, presents her film And the living is easy, 2014, 74 min.

Beirut 2011, the city is strangely quiet, held in abeyance, while the region is going through major upheavals. I created, through five characters, most of whom are not professional actors, a portrait of my city. All of them—the sales executive, the musician, the artist, the actress, and the singer—express their love for Beirut along with the difficulty of living in it. Over a period of eight months, I asked them to interpret scenes inspired by their love life, their job, their friends and the places they like. The city and their feelings become intertwined. By creating a fiction based on their daily lives, I emphasize the malaise that prevails in Beirut nowadays. The sweetness of life conceals the anxiety arising from the political instability of the country and the region, as well as a fear of conflicts, Lebanon still being marked by past wars.

And the living is easy is written and directed by Joreige. Produced by Les Films d’Ici: Patricia Cartier-Millon & Serge Lalou. With Mireille Kassar, Firas Beydoun, Anna Ogden-Smith, Raïa Haidar and Tarek Atoui.


Lamia Joreige

Lamia Joreige is a visual artist and filmmaker who lives and work in Beirut. She uses archival documents and elements of fiction to reflect on history and its possible narration and on the relationship between individual stories and collective memory. Her practice, rooted in her country’s experience, explores the possibilities of representing the Lebanese wars and their aftermath, particularly in Beirut, a city at the center of her imagery.

Joreige artworks have been presented in various exhibitions venues, among which: in France at the Centre Pompidou and musée Nicéphore Niépce; in the United States at Harvard University’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, the International Center of Photography, the New Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Taymour Grahne Gallery; in the UK at the Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Serpentine Gallery and Cardiff National Museum; and in The UAE at the Sharjah Biennial. She was also shortlisted for Artes Mundi 7, the United Kingdom’s leading biennial art prize.

She is a cofounder and board member of Beirut Art Center, which she codirected from 2009 to 2014. Joreige earned her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design.