"The Night Between Ali & I" by Nadia Hotait and Laila Hotait
“The night between Ali and I”, is a fictional reenactment displayed as a triptych of one of the key events that happened in Lebanese and Levantine contemporary History: the highjack of 39 hostages at the Bank of America in Beirut, on October 18th, 1973.
In this event four armed young fellows from the Lebanese Socialist Revolutionary Movement entered the bank, in Downtown Beirut, and asked from the authorities ten million dollars for the Arab fight against Imperialism in the region and the release of a few Arab political prisoners. They also requested that their demands and manifesto be published in the newspaper.
The videoinstallation, displayed as a triptych, has three main voices: Amer Farrough´s, one of the 4 men who assaulted the bank; Mariam´s who is Ali’s sister and our own voice narrating how we imagined the events. The images evoke in a particular way what happened during the 26 hours the hijack lasted recreating how the interaction between the hostages and the guerrilla gunmen, in our view, developed into a particular dance: a deconstructed and intimate "dabke".
In this event four armed young fellows from the Lebanese Socialist Revolutionary Movement entered the bank, in Downtown Beirut, and asked from the authorities ten million dollars for the Arab fight against Imperialism in the region and the release of a few Arab political prisoners. They also requested that their demands and manifesto be published in the newspaper.
The videoinstallation, displayed as a triptych, has three main voices: Amer Farrough´s, one of the 4 men who assaulted the bank; Mariam´s who is Ali’s sister and our own voice narrating how we imagined the events. The images evoke in a particular way what happened during the 26 hours the hijack lasted recreating how the interaction between the hostages and the guerrilla gunmen, in our view, developed into a particular dance: a deconstructed and intimate "dabke".
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