Un Âne (2023)
Eitan Efrat and Sirah Foighel Brutmann
Un Âne, Eitan Efrat and Sirah Foighel Brutmann, Belgium, 16mm > digital, 12.5 min, 2023
Un Âne follows the route laid out by Chantal Akerman in the Naqab desert while shooting her final film, No Home Movie (2015). Akerman intended her images to be understood as a generic desert, but the artists recognized and traced the exact position of Akerman’s supposed “generic” images in Palestine. Following Akerman’s footsteps, the camera turns where the filmmaker didn’t, to reveal the location of this particular desert and to pronounce its name in Arabic. Building upon this simple gesture, Un Âne reframes this site, including its geopolitical history and actuality, where evidence of colonial practices of segregation and deprivation of the Bedouin community remain present and practiced.
Un Âne is part of the artists’ larger project Là (2024), a multi-screen installation with 16mm film, slides, video, and sound.
Streaming Details
This film is available to stream globally.
Program Partners
This film is co-presented with Spellerberg Projects.
Image credits: artworks and stills courtesy the artists © Eitan Efrat and Sirah Foighel Brutmann. Portrait courtesy © Yaqine Hamzaoui.
About the artist
Eitan Efrat (Belgium) and Sirah Foighel Brutmann (Belgium) are multidisciplinary artists, both born in Tel Aviv in 1983. They have worked in collaboration since 2006, creating works in the audiovisual field, installation, and performance. Their practice focuses on the performative aspects of moving and still images: the relations between spectatorship and history, the temporality of narratives and memory, and the material surfaces of image production. They both received an MFA from École de recherche graphique (ERG) in Brussels. Their work has been exhibited at festivals and institutions worldwide including Kunsthalle Basel, Argos, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, Les Rencontres International Paris/Berlin, Jeu de Paume, STUK, European Media Arts Festival, Doc Lisboa, ICA London, Media City Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, New Horizons, and 25FPS, winning a Marian McMahon Award from Images Festival and a jury prize from International Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, among other awards. Efrat and Foighel Brutmann support the struggle for the liberation of the Palestinian people in Palestine and around the world and refuse any monetary support or transaction with government-subsidized institutions in Israel. They live and work in Brussels, Belgium, where they are members of the artists’ collective Messidor and teach at ERG.