Moving-Image Works by Rabih Mroué

Moving-Image Works by Rabih Mroué

Rabih Mroué, Chalk Outlines (still), 2020.
Moving-Image Works by Rabih Mroué

Student $7
General $10

Date
April 30, 2026, 7–8:30pm
172 Classon Avenue
Brooklyn NY 11205
USA

Join us at e-flux Screening Room on Thursday, April 30, 2026 at 7pm for a screening of films and videos by Rabih Mroué.

Bringing together selected works made between 2002 and 2020, this program offers an overview of Mroué’s moving-image practice, which examines the relation between images, personal memory, and political history. Situated across theater, video, and performance, these works move between family testimony, wartime images, and essayistic reflection, attending to the unstable status of documents, voices, and recorded events.

Films

Face A / Face B (2002, 10 minutes)
A metaphysical film exploring the nature of memory and knowledge, sight and sound, physical evidence and identity, and recollection and survival. Acclaimed Lebanese stage and performance director and actor Rabih Mroué leads us on a seemingly autobiographical journey from his childhood, through the Lebanese civil war, to his present as he searches for meaning among the fragments of his memory, cassette tapes, and photos. 

With Soul, with Blood (2003, 10 minutes)
The tension between "I" and "we" is at the heart of democratic life. How to be in a collective without erasing one’s individuality? This video is about trying to find a unique voice, values, and ideas within the group that, whether intentionally or unintentionally, may overshadow others.

Footnotes (2014–2016, 50 minutes)
In Footnotes, Mroué addresses his own experiences of war and its lingering aftermaths.  The work collects visual footnotes, unfinished thoughts and outtakes, from years of living and working in his home country of Lebanon. References to civil war and displacement are frequent, but so are broader questions about living and dying and the strange commune in between. 

Shooting Images (2012, 9 minutes)
I had been struck by one sentence: “The Syrian protesters are recording their own deaths.” I found a lot of material, but one group of videos grabbed me in particular, in which we witness a Syrian protester being shot by one of the regime’s soldier forces. These videos show the moments of eye contact between the killer and his victim, when the gun’s line of sight and the camera’s lens meet. - Rabih Mroué

Chalk Outlines (2020, 2 minutes)
Through his short video, Mroué creates a quiet, personal response to loss and the everyday realities of wars. It traces recurring impressions, creating an homage to the phantom presence of the dead.

Cheers to Our Wishes (2020, 15 minutes)
A video essay combining an adaptation of Antonin Artaud’s story on the oriental plague, an email correspondence between Mroué and his doctor concerning a infection in his way of seeing, and a video-letter to his sister in which he reflects on a family gathering.

For more information, contact program@e-flux.com.

Accessibility
– Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.
– For elevator access, please RSVP to program@e-flux.com. The building has a freight elevator nearest to 180 Classon Ave (a garage door) leading into the e-flux office space. A ramp is available for steps within the space.
– e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom with no steps between the event space and this bathroom.

Category
Film, Theater, War & Conflict
Subject
Film, Video Art, Memory, History

It is said that Rabih Mroué is a theatre-maker and a playwright. It is also said that he is a visual artist and a video-maker. It is said that in his work, Mroué blurs the lines between fiction and reality. It is said that he has presented his work at international festivals and exhibited his art in museums and art centers... He is always surprised by the elements chosen to highlight his bio: civil war, Arab, censorship, semi-documentary theatre, post-traumatic themes, and other clichés… and much more has been said about him. Mroué, personally, cannot confirm whether any of these assumptions are true. What he can confirm with certainty is that, despite his efforts, he has never succeeded in becoming a citizen—neither in his own country nor elsewhere. It is also true that Mroué once wanted to be a professional cook, but he never managed to become one.

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