INTERVIEW OF THE WEEK:
AMMAR AL BEIK – ARTIST
Ammar al-Beik (b.17/12/1972 in Damascus, Syria) is a Pigeon Breeder, Football Player, Conceptual Artist, and a Filmmaker.
His works are totally independent productions, where one person creates every aspect of the production process.
Represented by Ayyam Gallery www.ayyamgallery.com since 2008, with which he exhibits his art (photography and installations) in all over the world.
The only Syrian filmmaker who represented his country Syria twice at the Venice International Film Festival – Orizzonti competition, in 2006 and 2011, Italy.
AMMAR ALBEIK, FILMOGRAPHY
1997: Light Harvest – 3 minutes.
2000: They Were Here – 8 minutes.
2002: 16mm- 2 minutes.
2002: Boulevard Al Assad – 1 minute.
2002: My Ear Can See – 8 minutes.
2002: When I Color My Fish – 5 minutes.
2003: Clapper- 58 minutes.
2006: I am The One Who Brings Flowers To Her Grave – 105 minutes Co Produced & Directed
2007: Jerusalem HD – 22 minutes.
2008: Samia – 40 minutes.
2011: The Sun’s Incubator – 12 minutes.
2011: Aspirin and A Bullet – 125 minutes.
How and where did you learn photography?
When I was 19, I decided to leave my studies at the university of Business Administration and worked daily long hours for nearly a decade at Studio Haig; which was founded in the 1950s, making it one of the first professional photography studios in Syria.
Providing me with invaluable technical and artistic training, there I learned the mechanical workings of equipment, from the ability to dismantle and reassemble cameras to the essentials of photography itself. At Studio Haig I also had the opportunity to read the very texts on cinema that became indispensable to my approach to filmmaking and was able to sift through the archives of a photographer who had taken portraits of hundreds of Syrians over the span of decades.
Discovering my own image as an infant in a photograph that my mother had commissioned. An interest in found images and Syria’s photographic history as seen through the eyes of photo-shooters that worked outside of a fine art distinction, i.e. academic tradition, continued long after I prepared my first solo exhibition in 1995.
What pushed you to give up on business administration and focus on photography?
Very simply because my admission to Business Administration was not a desire, it was simply because my grades in high school allowed me to get into this university.
How do you explain becoming one of the country’s leading filmmaker?
My belief in Cinema; it is my wide world, from the inside and the outside, and is my playground that has no limits. My belief in digging into the darkness of my inner self continuously and thoroughly. My belief that there are filmmakers just like me in the world and much stronger than me in their duty. And my strong belief that cinema is the God I cherish, I communicate with and I criticize as well. All this derives me to be very sincere in my work each and every minute.
What is the secret to take a perfect picture?
There are no secrets to be declared. There is no such perfect picture. Most of the times, imperfect pictures are more likely to resemble us. If we consider that a picture is art, then there is not perfect art. The perfect picture is the one which is crazy and rebellion most. It is the picture that breaks all rules and ratios, it breaks what’s right and what’s wrong. The picture is us, and we are way far from perfection.
In the future, do you want to work on other medias than photography and painting?
I continuously work on different projects and mediums. Art for me is all mediums together. A mixture of mediums; Cinema, a photograph, written texts for a film, poetry, music, video art and installation.
Do you consider working on videos?
I really don’t plan or think of what to do, because behind my stories there aren’t purely decisions and plans. Art comes out from where we don’t know or don’t expect… And video art is within the context of what I do.
Thanks to Ammar El Beik
READ OUR OTHER INTERVIEWS
|
