The CU Anthropology Department will host a screening of *The Narrow Streets of Bourj Hammoud* an ethnographic film by Joanne Nucho and Rosy Kuftedjian on *Friday, April 28th at 4pm in 328 Milbank (Barnard). *
Following the screening, there will be a discussion with the filmmakers. Professor Elizabeth Povinelli will be the discussant.
*Film Synopsis*: The Narrow Streets of Bourj Hammoud is a 72-minute experimental non-fiction film about a working-class suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, called Bourj Hammoud, made as a collaboration between anthropologist and filmmaker Joanne Nucho and Lebanese artist Rosy Kuftedjian. The neighborhood has always long been a hub for migration; it was urbanized in the 1930s to permanently settle Armenian refugees of the 1915 genocide in the Ottoman Empire and subsequent decades brought waves of rural to urban migration from elsewhere in Lebanon. Today, it remains a diverse district that is also home to migrants and displaced people from Syria and elsewhere. Filmed over a period of seven years (2008-2015), the film examines the residents' overlapping histories of displacement through how they explain and sketch the urban space of the neighborhood. Participants were asked to draw a visual representation of the neighborhood that reflects something that has changed over time, or about something that is meaningful to them about the neighborhood. These maps shape the narrative of the film, which is anchored in the city’s constantly shifting infrastructures. "The Narrow Streets" reveals how different people experience rootedness and displacement through the changing built environment of the city. The result is a lyrical ethnographic reflection on history and the materiality of urban space narrated by longtime residents and recent arrivals to Bourj Hammoud. The project received generous support from the Wenner Gren Foundation.
*Trailer*: https://vimeo.com/157942167
*Joanne Randa Nucho* is an anthropologist and a filmmaker and is currently a Mellon Chau Postdoctoral Fellow in Anthropology at Pomona College. She earned her PhD at the University of California, Irvine in 2013 and holds a BFA in Film Production from NYU. Her book Everyday Sectarianism in Urban Lebanon: Infrastructure, Public Services and Power was published by Princeton University Press in 2016. Her films have shown in international contexts, including the London International Documentary Film Festival in 2008.
*Rosy Kuftedjian* is a Lebanese artist, photographer and social activist. In Lebanon, she worked closely with documentary film director and activist Zeina Daccache to put on a theatrical performance with inmates at Roumieh prison. She was also involved in prison reform and advocacy work. She is currently based in Montreal, Canada.
