CASTING FOR A FILM, IHSAN’S DIARY is part of a larger project entitled “Uncertain Times”, initiated in 2017, which includes the feature film project JERUSALEM, THE DIARY OF IHSAN TURJMAN and involves the research and production of artworks on the period between the end of the Ottoman Empire and the beginning of the French and English mandate in Lebanon, Syria and Palestine (1914-1920), which saw the geographic, political and social transformation of this region, which consequences still impact our lives today.
I am interested in the different stories of this period narrated from a subjective viewpoint. I wish to express the tensions and anxieties, but also the hopes and expectations felt by the population of that time. The diary of Ihsan Turjman written in 1915 to 1916, was the most interesting and compelling document reflecting such a subjective perspective and the one that echoed best my interrogations. I read it in 2017 and read it again. It grew in me for years, until I decided to adapt it and collaborate with Palestinian writer Majd Kayyal to develop and write the script.
This is a rare testimony of a young person depicting his fears, ideals and hopes in times of conflict and uncertainty; he describes the daily struggle in his city and dreams of a peaceful life with a woman he platonically loves. Ihsan questions the future of Palestine and notions of patriotism and identity, his progressive views towards women and their emancipation demonstrate the spirit of change of the time. This exceptional document is strangely contemporaneous. So much of the uncertainty of the epoch, the political turmoil and fear felt by the population, is similar today.
The fact that we cannot access Jerusalem due to political reasons and the ongoing state of war between Lebanon and Israel, creates limitations and difficulties that led me to find other ways to represent it.
In the video installation CASTING FOR A FILM, IHSAN’S DIARY, the casting process, which is usually a key preparatory element of a film process, becomes the central subject in itself. Inspired by Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s film SALAAM CINEMA, among others, this work reflects on the role of actors and the storytelling process, at times anachronistic. Throughout the film project, I interrogate the politics of representation and ideas of authenticity through discussions with the actors. The film delves into themes of longing, identity, and historical memory. It invites us to reflect on historical processes, and notions of temporality from which we understand the present and imagine the future.
Jerusalem is not only a mythical place with a rich history and many clichés, but also a place that I have always dreamed of visiting as my grandmother was born there in 1910. How to portray Jerusalem is crucial. The fact that I (the director) and the actors cannot access Jerusalem due to political reasons and the ongoing state of war between Lebanon and Israel, creates limitations and difficulties that led me to find other ways to represent it. Jerusalem appears through an animated drawing that unfolds throughout the film, an image that is fictive and real at once, based on an image created through AI using prompts by the director and the actors. Such a perspective reinforces the concept of inaccessibility and of an imagined place.
This project draws from my practice as an artist and filmmaker using archives and fiction to reflect on history and its possible narration and the relation between individual stories and collective memory. Concepts of non-linear time and fragmented history are central to my practice, where visual associations and stories’ reenactments work across the boundaries of an epoch, connecting different temporalities and allowing me to evoke the current political situation.
