Raed Andoni's GHOST HUNTING (2017) + a recorded conversation with the director
To benefit relief efforts in Gaza, a special screening of this Berlinale prize-winning documentary, chronicling former Palestinian prisoners who re-enact their experiences on screen.
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Aug 13, 2024, 8:00 PM
2220 Arts + Archives, 2220 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90057, USA
Ghost Hunting
Directed by Raed Andoni
2017, Palestine/France/Switzerland/Qatar, 94m, DCP
A Gaza aid benefit, presented with Failed Architecture. Followed by a recorded conversation with Andoni and Nasreen Abd Elal.
All proceeds from this screening will benefit relief and evacuation efforts in Gaza.
doors: 7:30
film: 8:00
Winner of the top documentary film prize at the Berlinale, Raed Andoni’s film is a stunning account of a radical and transformative experiment, wherein the filmmaker worked directly with former Palestinian prisoners to reconstruct their experiences in a theatrical setting. In 2017, the filmmaker placed an advertisement in Ramallah looking for former inmates of the al-Moskobiya interrogation center in Jerusalem, with an emphasis on those who have experience in construction, architecture and acting. After the casting process, he asks the men to build a replica of the cells and rooms to scale, and then to rehearse and re-enact their interrogations. As these men come face to face with their long-repressed traumas, the experience allows them to heal as part of a group, and turn their collective suffering into strength.
"A major cinematic achievement. Beautiful and ugly, powerful and compelling, it utterly condemns the brutality in a wily, witty and devious way that is always totally honest." -Mike Leigh
"This film...is startling in its originality. It is an extraordinary recreation of the imprisonment of Palestinians by the Israeli state. The making of the film is laid bare." -Ken Loach
"Ghost Hunting’s ultimate point does not lie in merely reenacting the trauma, but rather in the nuances—the surplus of contradictory feelings, the dark humor, the contextualizing, the bodily language, and finally the words. All these make the film’s final impact far more complex than one would assume." -Ela Bittencourt, Reverse Shot
Official Selection: Berlinale 2017 (Winner: Best Original Documentary)
Failed Architecture is a platform for architecture and spatial criticism. By opening up new perspectives on the built environment, its editors aim to reconnect architecture with the real world. For more information, please visit failedarchitecture.com.
This screening is part of Besieged: Home, Land, Time, Water, a Failed Architecture series about the spatial politics of settler colonialism in Palestine. Through films, texts, and conversations, it explores how the architecture, infrastructure, and spatial regime of Israel's occupation constrains various dimensions of daily life for Palestinians. The series runs July through August on failedarchitecture.com/besieged.
Special thanks to Sasha Plotnikova.