VENICE, Italy -- Built in 1565, Palazzo Franchetti overlooking the Grand Canal, the main waterway of Venice, is a splendid piece of Gothic architecture, including a beautiful garden. The building has turned into a very different space to coincide with the 60th Venice Biennale from April to November for the exhibition, “Your Ghosts Are Mine: Expanded Cinemas, Amplified Voices,” which takes people to explore the Arab world, Africa and South Asia through film and video works by filmmakers and artists from these regions. “All the filmmakers and artists we chose are quite ahead of the (rest of) society.
They are really pioneers in a way. The notion of ‘expanded cinema’ (in the title) was the idea to go through a cartography of filmmakers exploring the borders and the margins, where you do not go so often,” said Matthieu Orlean, who curated the exhibition, on June 6. “I think it will be a big discovery for many of the viewers that come here,” he said.
Orlean went through the films of the collection of the Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar and the Art Mill Museum slated to open in 2030. The selected works by more than 40 artists span a wide range of genres -- from fiction to documentary, animation and memoirs -- and are organized under 10 themes. Discussing the title of the exhibition, "Your Ghosts Are Mine," Orlean observed that it does not refer to a question of fear or a threat.
“It is more of the complexity of the ghosts, as it has an ambivalent status.
