Twenty Eight Nights and A Poem

Founded in 1997, the Arab Image Foundation preserves the legacy and collection of photographer Hashem el Madani and the Sheherazade photo studio.  This film offers a study of the photographer’s studio practice in the mid-20th Century and exploration of the essence of archives today.  Alternating between the Foundation archive and staged interventions in the artist's current studio, the film is a meditation on image making and on age itself.

"Twenty-Eight Nights and a Poem (Thamaniat wa ushrun laylan wa bayt min al-sheir), the new feature-length film by artist, curator and filmmaker Akram Zaatari, mingles elements of biography and cultural history, autobiography and taxonomy to form a work that is at once acutely critical and affectionately nostalgic."

– Jim Quilty, The Daily Star Lebanon, February 13th, 2015

"The story of the studio and its role in the community [is] intertwined with close-ups of technological devices — ranging from 8mm film and radios to laptops and smartphones — that bring music, cinema, and home movies into the picture. Simultaneously, they are presented as tools through which individuals both receive culture and broadcast images of their own making."

– Museum of Modern Art, New York, Films from Here: Recent Views from the Arab World 

Written and produced by Akram Zaatari

Camera: Akram Zaatari, Mark Khalifeh, Bassem Fayad

Sound recording: Karine Basha

Assistant Director: Mohammad Talaat

Editing: Jowe Harfouche

Color Grading: Belal Hibri, Rezvisual

Sound Design: Rana Eid, db Studios

Music: Nadim Mishlawi

Produced thanks to: Musée Nicéphore Niépce, Chalon-sur-Saône, AFAC, The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture