For the first time in Zagreb, we will screen Vida Guzmić‘s film Detours, shot in Lebanon, as well as Now, if you look at the sky, made by her colleague a Lebanese artist Maissa Maatouk. After the screenings, we will have a conversation with Vida Guzmić.

Detours by Vida Guzmić is an experimental documentary shot in Lebanon from 2019 to 2021. The edited footage is mostly recorded in Beirut, pre and post the 4th of August explosion in the Port of Beirut, and during the mass protests that erupted on the 7th of October 2019. The work documents, in a ‘peripheral’ way, a moment of Lebanon’s turbulent history and the experience of disorientation within it, as well as a moment of collective encounter, a revolution led by youth and solidarity. 

Despite its absence, Now, if you look at the sky (2021.) by Maissa Maatouk has the focus on the image of the sky above Beirut. Between the freezing effect of the sound of warplanes crossing the sky, and the feeling of being present while flying pigeons, this video attempts to account for the missing image of the sky, which is occupied by Israeli planes through the gestures of the pigeon fancier.

Vida Guzmić is a visual artist working in film, video, and installation. She completed her MA in New Media at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb.. Her work explores the relations between objects and subjects, gendered geographies, and representations through screen technologies. She has held residencies at V2_Institute for unstable media in Rotterdam, KulturKontakt Austria in Vienna, Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, and fellowships at WHW Akademija in Zagreb and Ashkal Alwan, HWP, Beirut. Works both as a solo artist and in numerous collaborations and engaged practices. She is a part of the artist-run collective Studio Pangolin and the performance collective Soundspiels.  

Maissa Maatouk (b. 1992, Beirut) is an artist living and working in Beirut. She graduated with degrees in product and global design from the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts (ALBA), Beirut (BA, 2014; MA, 2017). Her recent projects tackle perception during the recent Lebanese collapse. She was a 2019–2020 fellow in Ashkal Alwan’s Home Workspace Program in Beirut and has been a resident at the Junge Akademie (Akademie der Künste) (2022), Saradar Foundation (2023), and Akademie Schloss Solitude (2023). She has shown her work in Lebanon, the USA, Germany, Austria, and France. Her most recent video work, Floating Lights, was part of the exhibition Foreshadows, curated by Reem Shadid at the Beirut Art Center (2024). 

The program is supported by:
Office for Culture and Civil Society of the City of Zagreb
Kultura Nova Foundation
Croatian Audiovisual Centre (HAVC)