Twenty-Eight Nights and a Poem • Akram Zaatari

Akram Zaatari's documentary is a contemplation on images, their role in Lebanese society over the decades, and the way they are used in the private, public, and occasionally ideological, spheres. Dipping into the archives of photographer Hashem el Madani, who ran a commercial photography studio in Sidon, a city in southern Lebanon, for fifty years, Zaatari puts the need for images in modern Arab society under scrutiny and in doing so invents a new style of cinematography.

A photographer, filmmaker, and curator, he has published a dozen books and produced forty short and feature films including The Landing, which was shown at the Berlinale and will be screened in June during the second instalment of Arsmondo Lebanon. He is also founder and director of the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut, whose mission is to assemble photographs from all over the Arab world into one precious collection as a resource for researchers and artists.