CULTURAL EXCHANGE
French Short Film Festival
🎥 Saturday 18th of March, 2023, at Beit Sarmada in collaboration with @ifdeirelqamar, Zara Fournier, @zaherkais A unique opportunity to discover portraits of women who stand out from the ranks and who, through their ethical, political or professional choices, show boldness, independence and assertive freedom!
Jour de Fête Compagnie
“Jour de Fête Compagnie” a theater company based in Basque country, which gathers artists (actors, stage director, musicians) around artistic projects created in public space (streets, parks, mountains…).Besides their performances and trainings it provides, the company has been committed since its creation in territorial projects with the inhabitants promoting social bond, the accessibility of the artistic act and the reappropriation by all of public space.
The company is now working on a new project inspired by André Chedid’s novel: The message. The team visited and stayed at Sarmada for 4 Days, sharing memories, songs, traditions, and knowledge, and stories of love during wartime! The goodbye night was a huge gathering around the fire where Jour de Fete performing our stories, in Sarmada’s pomegranate backyard, a charming evening full of love, food, poetry, arts and laughter!
WORKSHOPS
Laurent Gongora
BACK TO THE FUTURE – POTTERY & EXPRESSION WORKSHOP
This workshop is thought as a treasure hunt around pottery!
Laurent Gongora, French visual artist in partnership with the French Institute Deir al Qamar
Laurent led an introduction to the history of pottery and to different techniques.
The attendees created together objects in clay, according to the oldest fabrication techniques, from clay collected in the mountain by a potter. These objects were baked in a pottery oven after drying.
Each of the participants wrote a text or prepared an object to put into the object he has crafted.
the workshop ends in the final exhibition, the objects created are exposed at the French Institute in Deir El Qamar, December 3, 2022.
Mirjam Barker
Led by Mirjam Barker, in partnership with The Embassy of Switzerland to Lebanon and Syria. This workshop is based on improvisation and refers to dancers/movers, especially the beginners, and enthusiastic people with or without previous knowledge in dance.
Starting with a regular warm up attendees got to learn very basic steps of the Middle Eastern folklore. With different exercises attendees start to work with these steps to get into communication, developing a moving encounter between oriental and occidental movement language.
Body Watani Dance Project
Workshops Sarmada hosts create a liaison between national, local and international art experts and the people of rural areas, attendees get to explore uncommon art genres and body movement skills, new ways of thinking and expression!
Body Watani dance project led by Leila Awadallah spent residency at Beit Sarmada collaborating with dancers Sarah Almoneem, Layal Berberi, Andrea Fahed and Natasha Karam on a new dance performance: TERRANEA.
TERRANEA begins with a forgotten mythology held deep within the sea. From dreaming to nightmare, the artists fall into confrontations with borders and boundaries that cut across land and water. Embodied returning explores the relations to land that flows like water and water that remembers history like land.
Artistic Freedom & Documenting Violations
Sarmada Association hosted a training on Artistic Freedom and Documenting Violations by FFEEMUSE, the last of three trainings conducted in Jordan and Tunisia as part of the Small Changes project’s objectives of building the capacities of local organizations and artists networks by delivering trainings on international frameworks on Artists Rights.
Somatic Movement Workshop
Valerie Green, in residency in Lebanon from the US, facilitated a somatic movement workshop at Beit Sarmada.
The class featured somatic based expressive movement exercises leading participants on their own personal movement journey within a nurturing and safe group environment. When using the language of movement rather than words, a different kind of image or emotion arises and bypasses the controlling and censoring mind. Words label what we know. Expressive movement reveals the unknown. This workshop aimed to find a physical expression to the feelings, whereby a healing process begins.
Contemporary Dance Workshop
Simea Cavelti, in residency in Lebanon at Sarmada, from the Switzerland, in this workshop attendees explored a wide range of physicality through multiple modes of listening; sensorial, imaginary, acoustically, physically and emotionally, as of dwelled into a collective and simultaneously individual journey to tune our instrument, the body. Our drive will be our personal curiosities and joy for movement while discovering new possibilities to compose and structure more precise in time and space, alone and together.