A new video installation by filmmaker and artist Hisham Bizri, a research fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, premieres at the Bernard Toale Gallery in Boston (450 Harrison Ave.) through May 10.
The multiscreen projection, entitled "Vertices: Beirut-Dublin-Seoul" captures a day in the life of the three cities through the medium of cinema. Bizri, who used a hidden camera to film simple scenes from everyday life, calls it a "cultural/historical/personal symphony of cities that have very different architectures, religions, cultures, sounds, races, gestures and costumes, but with shared experiences of a colonial past."
Bizri, who says his work has been influenced by his "exile experience as a Lebanese Muslim living in the West," has also been making the rounds of prestigious film festivals with his 2002 digital film, "La Rencontre" (The Encounter). The 34-minute film was screened at the Ismailia International Film Festival in Egypt in September and at the Cinema Nova in Melbourne, Australia in October. "La Rencontre" was also accepted at the Rencontres Internationales Film Festivals, held in Paris this past February and in Berlin next July; it is also being shown as part of the Second Digital Talkies Film Festival in New Delhi, India, from April 4-10.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on April 9, 2003.
