Thamaniat wa ushrun laylan wa bayt min al-sheir (Twenty-Eight Nights and a Poem). 2015. Lebanon. Directed by Akram Zaatari. 105 min.
This striking visual essay continues Lebanese artist Akram Zaatari’s ongoing engagement with the work of photographer Hashem el Madani, who ran a commercial studio for five decades in southern Lebanon. The Arab Image Foundation, which Zaatari cofounded in 1997 with the mission of collecting and preserving photographs from the Arab world, houses and studies the Madani collection. Yet the film distances itself from this archival impulse, moving away from the stability and sanctity of the object in favor of expansiveness, creating contemporary meaning through new contexts and approaches. A doubling occurs throughout the film, with the story of the studio and its role in the community intertwined with close-ups of technological devices—ranging from 8mm film and radios to laptops and smartphones—that bring music, cinema, and home movies into the picture. Simultaneously, they are presented as tools through which individuals both receive culture and broadcast images of their own making. A recurring scene shows negatives being inspected on a light table, the hands that are manipulating them, and Madani recounting his years at the studio from the screen of an iPhone. It’s an unexpected juxtaposition but an emblematic one, creating the deeply human sense of being with another person among a sea of images.