El Hizjra: Arabische poëzie, dans, muziek en film
El Hizjra: Arabic poetry, dance, music and film
Poetry, dance and music to accompany the projection of exceptional images (‘found footage’) from the Eye collection. With performances from three poets: Tunisian-Dutch Lamia Makaddam, Iranian-Dutch Yasmin Namavar and Saba Hamzah from Yemen. Dancer Laila el Bazi will dance and Mohamed Ahaddaf will play the oud.
The first edition of the mini-festival Eye Meets Marmoucha devotes special attention to poetry. Marmoucha, a music and cultural collective from North Africa and the Middle East, is greatly involved in crossovers between music and other art forms and regularly collaborates with El Hizjra, the platform for Arabic literature in the Netherlands. This programme was compiled in cooperation with El Hizjra.
Three poets will participate in this performance: Tunisian-Dutch Lamia Makaddam, Iranian-Dutch Yasmin Namavar and Yemeni-Dutch Saba Hamzah. They will perform their poetry in Arabic or in Farsi, with audio and visual Dutch translation.
The poems enter into a dialogue with dance by Laila el Bazi, music from oud player Mohamed Ahaddaf and of course film: exceptional images (‘found footage’) from the Eye collection made up of film shot in Egypt, Libya, Morrocco and Tunisia in the 1910s and ’20s. This promises to be a very special afternoon.
Programme
Lamia Makaddam is a Tunisian-Dutch poet and translator. Makaddam studied Arabic language and literature at the University of Sousse. Following her studies, she emigrated to the Netherlands. She has published three volumes of poetry in Arabic. Her work has been translated into Dutch, English, French and Kurdish.
Saba Hamzah سبأ حمزة is a poet-scholar, writer and educator. Saba is the author of two poetry collections. She was selected for the International Writing Program 2023 fellowship and is a fellow scholar at Vassar College in New York. Her poetry and writing have been published internationally in different languages. She has contributed to and collaborated with many academic, artistic, and media platforms and publications, and is the founder of the Yemeni Women’s Archive, a digital space for knowledge emerging from women’s experiences.
Yasmin Namavar is of Iranian-Dutch descent and mainly writes poetry. She has previously published in Tirade, De Gids, SampleKanon and the Optimist, among others, and she was a finalist for the El Hizjra literature prize (2022). Yasmin works as a psychiatrist.
Laila el Bazi is a performing artist born and bred in Friesland, with a Dutch mother and a Moroccan father. She graduated in acting at ‘D’drive kunsteducatie’ in Leeuwarden and studied Modern Dance Theatre at Fontys Academy of the Arts in Tilburg. She has worked as an actor for theatre group Tryater and taught hip hop, physical theatre and theatre improvisation.
Mohamed Ahaddaf, one of the core members of Marmoucha Orchestra, is an oud player, composer and musician from Morrocco with deep roots in Andalusian culture. He studied at the music academy in Tetouan and was taught by maestro Mohamed Ramat. He was a soloist with the Mohamed Lardi Temsamani Andalusian orchestra. He is a respected musician who, alongside his Andalusian roots, is accomplished in jazz and Arabic music.
This is part of
Details
Production year
2024
Length
60 min.
Event language
Dutch, Arabic
Country
NL
Part of
Eye Meets Marmoucha
Eye joins forces with Marmoucha, a collective for music and culture from North Africa and the Middle East presenting not only exceptional silent films with live musical accompaniment, but also building bridges between eastern and western cultures.
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