Hostage: The Bachar Tapes (English Version) (2001)
Walid Raad
Hostage: The Bachar Tapes (English Version), Walid Raad, Lebanon, digital, 16 min, 2001
Hostage: The Bachar Tapes (English Version) is an experimental documentary about the so-called “Western Hostage Crisis,” referring to the abduction and detention of Westerners in Lebanon in the 1980s and early 1990s by “Islamic militants.” This episode directly and indirectly consumed Lebanese, US, French, and British political and public life, and precipitated a number of high-profile political scandals, such as the Iran-Contra affair in the USA. In Hostage: The Bachar Tapes (English Version), the “Western Hostage Crisis” is examined through the testimony of Souheil Bachar, who was held hostage in Lebanon between 1983 and 1993. What is remarkable about Souheil’s captivity is that he was the only Arab to have been detained with the Western hostages kidnapped in Beirut in the 1980s. In 1999, Bachar collaborated with The Atlas Group (a nonprofit cultural research foundation based in Lebanon) to produce 53 videotapes about his captivity. Tapes #17 and #31 are the only two tapes Bachar makes available outside of Lebanon. In the tapes, Bachar addresses the cultural, textual, and sexual aspects of his detention with the Americans.
Streaming Details
This film is available to stream globally.
Program Partners
This film is co-presented with Light Industry and Video Data Bank.
Image credits: all artworks, portraits, and stills courtesy of Video Data Bank © Walid Raad.
About the artist
Walid Raad (Lebanon/USA) is an artist who works in film, photography, multimedia installation, and performance, born in Chbaniyeh, Lebanon in 1967. His practice deals with the contemporary history of Lebanon, with particular emphasis on the Lebanese Civil War of 1975–90, and is concerned with the representation of traumatic events and the ways that film, video, and photography function as documents of physical and psychological violence. He received a PhD in Cultural and Visual Studies from University of Rochester (1996). In the 1990s Raad created a fictional foundation called The Atlas Group to accommodate and contextualize his output of works documenting the Lebanese Civil Wars. Raad’s work, exhibited under his name or as projects of The Atlas Group, have been included in two Whitney Biennials, Documenta 11, São Paulo Biennial, and Venice Biennale, with important solo exhibitions held at The Kitchen, Kunsthalle Hamburg, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museo Nacional, Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Stedelijk Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, and Galerie Sfeir-Semler, among many other institutions worldwide. He is a recipient of a Hasselblad Award (2011), an Infinity Award (2006), a Herb Alpert Award (2007), and an Aachen Art Prize (2019), which was rescinded after he refused to denounce the BDS movement which calls for a cultural boycott of Israel. Along with Akram Zaatari and others, he co-founded the (non-fictional) Fondation Arabe pour l’image (FAI) in 1996, to collect and exhibit photographic testimony from the Arab world. He lives and works in New York, where he teaches at Bard College and Cooper Union.