Short Texts

Carine Doumit writes short texts around and about cinema.

Mädchen: A Letter to Helga Fanderl

short text | written in French, translated to English and Spanish | 2019

Filmmaker Helga Fanderl makes intimate and stricking short 8mm films. Each screening of her films is a unique composition of various films, a singular poetic moment. Helga invites me to a special screening in her former Raüm fur Film (Room for Film) in Berlin, and after returning to Beirut, where I am thrown into the momentum of a social uprising, I write her a letter. The text is published by Punto De Vista Festival as part of a homage to the filmmaker.  

The Dancing Rift | الثغرة الراقصة

short text | written in Arabic, translated to English by Lina Mounzer | 2020 

A few months after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, which also marks the slow exhaustion of the 2019 uprising in Lebanon, I am invited to write on the theme of perpetual postponement. I write to my friend Liwaa Yazji who now lives in Berlin. I want to tell her about a peculiar dancing rift on a film strip. I also want to know how she could bear the loss of images and texts, a loss she had experienced twice in the past year. But first and foremost, I want to share with her my personal interpretation of Mohamed Soueid’s enigmatic title: I am in Camelia | أنا في الكاميليا. 

?Have you Written Anything Lately | صمت الأخضر

short text | co-written with Nour Ouayda in Arabic, translated to English by Suneela Mubayi | 2020 

The text is a conversation between N. and C., the fictional characters of the film one sea, 10 seas by Nour Ouayda. Months after the violent blast which hit the silos of the port of Beirut on August 4, 2020, N. and C. walk side by side again towards the sea. The two friends break multiple layers of silence as they talk about the vibrations generated by the sudden occurrence of certain events, reverberations which penetrate the body, meandering through it, never fading away completely. 

Vers le rouge ou la rétraction de l‘univers selon Jeanne Dielman

short text | written in Arabic and in French | 2021 

Following a residency at the Arsenal film archives during the summer of 2019, I make an usual encounter: a copy of Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles by Chantal Akermann which had turned completely red, apparently for “chemical reasons”. However, I have multiple other explanations for the dramatic redshift. I was also invited to publish a French version of the text as part of a special issue on the circulation in (the) film archives, co-edited by Nour Ouayda and Ghada Sayegh in the online film magazine Hors Champ. 

In the Core of the City, at the Exact Midpoint of the Night

short text | written in English | 2022 

I was invited to write a short text as part of the virtual exhibition «Norient City Sounds: Beirut» curated and edited by Rayya Badran. Here, fictional entries of a personal diary introduce characters of the upcoming film The Night Came About by Mira Adoumier.

This is How We Work Together

Read the Room #3: Self Organizations: Tips & Tricks for Working Together
Supplement published in 2024
Written by Carine Doumit
Commissioning editors: Krystel Khoury and Mai Abu ElDahab
Copyedited and proofread by Jenifer Evans
Design by Siwar Kraitem
Commissioned and published by Mophradat

Read the Room is the title of a series of booklets published by Mophradat about questions that affect us collectively as a community. “Us” is people everywhere who call the Arab world home, are concerned with its present, and through a wide variety of art practices aspire to take part in shaping its future.