Alba's Cine-Rencontres will bring together researchers, students and cultural actors for three days dedicated to the world of cinema and art around screenings, discussions, case studies, installations and movie concerts.

Mai Masri

Mai Masri is a dedicated and productive filmmaker who has mainly directed documentaries on the fundamentals of humanism and the resiliency of ordinary people with extraordinary lives. Her filmography comprises: Children of Fire (1990), Children of Shatila (1998), Frontiers of Dreams and Fears (2001), A Woman for Her Time (1995), Beirut Diaries (2006), and 33 Days (2007).

She has also co-directed with her late husband Jean Chamoun: Under the Rubble (1983), Wild Flowers (1986), War Generation - Beirut (1998), Suspended Dreams (1992). In 1995, she created her production company NOUR where she produced Chamoun's films: In the shadows of the city (2001), Women beyond Borders (2004), Hostage of time (1995), Longing for the laurel (2008), Lanterns of memory (2009). In 2015, she directed her first feature film 3000 Nights, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and won over 28 awards. The film also featured Jordan for the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film and Palestine for the Golden Globes.

Hady Zaccak

Hady Zaccak first began his journey by writing a book on the history of Lebanese cinema entitled "Le cinéma libanais: itinéraire d'un cinéma vers l'inconnu" (1929-1996) which was followed by the production of a number of sociopolitical documentaries illustrating his country's rich and ancient history. From 1997 to present, Mr. Zaccak has been writing and directing over 20 documentaries aired on Lebanese, Arab and European channels. Some of his films have won awards such as “a History Lesson" (2009) (Best Documentary Award at the Rotterdam Arab Film Festival-2010) "Marcedes" (2011) (FIPRESCI Award (the International Federation of Film Critics) at the Dubai International Film Festival 2011), "Kamal Joumblatt, witness and martyr" (2015) (Trophée de la Francophonie for best documentary in 2016) and "Ya Omri" (104 wrinkles) (2017) (Jury Award at the Malmo Arab Film Festival in Sweden, 2017). All these movies were also released in theatres. He also teaches at l'Institut d'Etudes Scéniques, Audiovisuelles et Cinématographiques of l’Université Saint-Joseph.

Fouad Charafeddine

Fouad Charafeddine, who was born in 1941, was one of the most famous Lebanese actors in Lebanon and the Arab world in the 1970s and 1980s. After beginning as a stuntman, Fouad Charafeddine started acting in action films directed by Samir Al-Ghoussainy, Rida Myassar and his brother Youssef Charafeddine, with whom he works frequently.

Aka "The Captain" (Al-capten), Fouad Charafeddine has repeatedly starred as a police officer or vigilante in movies like Al-Qarar (Youssef Charafeddine, 1981), Al-Moutawahichoun (Rida Myassar, 1982), Qafzat Al-Mawt (Youssef Charafeddine, 1983), Al-Rou'ya (Youssef Charafeddine, 1983), Fatayat Al-Raqm Al-Saab (Samir Al-Ghoussayni, 1987).

Fouad Charafeddine also wrote and directed two films: Al-Sarkha (1985), and Ivanova (2000). He is currently appearing in many Lebanese and Egyptian television series.

 Case-studies       

Samir Ardjoum is an Algerian film critic who has written for many reviews such as El Watan (Algeria), Critikat, and so on... He was the Artistic Director of the Rencontres Cinématographiques de Béjaia (2011/2014). Today, he is part of the EastAsia podcast team and the web Radio 201-info, a platform for African cultures. Samir Ardjoum is in the process of preparing an interview book with Algerian filmmaker Merzak Allouache.

Alia Hamdan
Alia Hamdan holds two master's degrees in philosophy and urban planning, which she completed at Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne and Paris X Nanterre universities. Currently, she is completing her doctoral studies in the Pratiques et Théorie du Sens laboratory at Université Paris 8, Vincennes-Saint-Denis. Her studies focus on the interaction between film and choreography. In Beyrouth, she produces and participates in performance projects, including Rétrospective de Le Roy Project at the Beirut Art Center (2016).

Edward Lachman
Edward Lachman was born on March 31, 1948 in Morristown, New Jersey, United States. He is best known for his work on Carol (2015), Far from Heaven (2002) and Ken Park (2002). Since 1994, he has been a member of the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC).
In the film industry, Edward Lachman made his debut as chief operator on Les Mains dans les poches, released in 1974. To date, he has directed and co-produced some 60 films, most of them American, as well as foreign films. Within this filmography are several documentaries, including three directed by Wim Wenders. Among his most successful films are Susan Seidelman's Desperately Searching Susan (1985), Volker Schlöndorff's Anger in Louisiana (1987), Sophia Coppola's Virgin Suicides (1999), Steven Soderbergh's Erin Brockovich (2000), Todd Haynes' Far from Heaven (2002), Robert Altman's The Last Show (2006).

Mathilde Rouxel

Mathilde Rouxel is a PhD student in film studies at l'Université Paris 3-Sorbonne Nouvelle. Since 1967, she has been involved in Arab cinema, especially women's documentaries in Egypt, Tunisia and Lebanon. She has published the first monograph on the Lebanese filmmaker Jocelyne Saab intitled Jocelyne Saab, la mémoire indomptée (1970-2015).

Olivier Hadouchi

Olivier Hadouchi has a doctorate in film studies, is a researcher and independent programmer as well as a frequent collaborator at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, the ZdB in Lisbon, the Mosaic Rooms in London, the BAL/Paris and more. He also published texts in CinémAction, Third Text, Mondes du cinéma, La Furia Umana and in various collective works, such as Chris Marker. L'homme-monde directed by C. Van Assche, R. Bellour and Frodon J.-M. Algériens en France directed by B. Stora and L. Amiri.

Saad Chakali

Saad Chakali has authored several publications such as Trafic, 24 images, Images documentaires, Vertigo, Something We Africans Got, catalogue Festival Entrevues and is a regular contributor to Eclipses and Le Rayon vert, as well as a co-host of Des Nouvelles du Front cinématographique web site. He is also the author of two books published by L'Harmattan entitled Jean-Luc Godard dans la relève des archives du mal in 2017 or, with Alexia Roux, Humanité restante. Penser l'événement avec la série “The Leftovers” in 2018.

As a regular contributor to Documentary Film Month in France, the Rencontres cinématographiques de Béjaïa in Algeria and a film club host at the University of La Manouba in Tunis, Saad Chakali finally works as a curatorial assistant at the Édouard-Glissant du Blanc-Mesnil media library.

Wissam Mouawad

Wissam Mouawad holds a PhD in Arts with a film major from l'Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and is a lecturer at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts. He is also an associate at the Historical Dictionary of Middle Eastern Cinema and author of several articles on Lebanese cinema. Wissam Mouawad also coordinates the research program "Contextes et Imaginaires des Cinémas du Monde Arabe" at l’Institut ACTE, Ecole des Arts de la Sorbonne.

Rabih Haddad

Rabih Haddad (Lebanon, 1961) is an author, scriptwriter, critic and communication consultant. He currently teaches Political Communication, Cinema and Politics and Memory of the Lebanese War at the Political Science Institute at Université Saint-Joseph, where he runs the film club. He has completed his studies in Literature at USJ, History of Art at l'Ecole du Louvre, Paris and Cinema at the Conservatoire Libre du Cinéma Français. After spending 27 years in France and creating FranceWeb, the first French Web agency, and leading the digital media for the Tour de France and Paris Dakar, Rabih resettled in Lebanon in early 2014.

Ghada Sayegh

Ghada Sayegh is a Doctor in Film studies at Université Paris-Ouest-Nanterre-La Défense, where she completed her thesis in December 2013 on "Images d’après : l'espace-temps de la guerre dans le cinéma au Liban, du "Nouveau Cinéma Libanais" (1975) aux pratiques artistiques contemporaines (de 1990 à nos jours)".

Her work focuses on artistic creation as opposed to history in cinema and contemporary art in Lebanon. She teaches at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts, as well as at the Institut d'Etudes Scéniques, Audiovisuelles et Cinématographiques de l'Université Saint-Joseph, as a lecturer.

Dima El Horr

Dima El Horr is a Doctor in Film studies and a director.

She is best known for her first feature film, "Every Day is a Holiday", which was selected by the Toronto Film Festival and the Rome International Film Festival.

May El Koussa

May El-Koussa is a lecturer and coordinator at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts (ALBA-UOB). She also teaches at the Lebanese University and the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik (USEK). She holds a PhD in Film studies from the Université Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris I, France).

Toufic El Khoury

Toufic El Khoury holds a doctorate in History and semiology of text and image in film studies from Université Paris Diderot - Paris VII. He is the author of La Comédie hollywoodienne classique (1929-1945), Structure triadique et médiations du désir « Champs visuels », L’Harmattan, 2016 and co-director, with Alain Brenas, of La ville méditerranéenne au cinéma (Orizons, 2015). He heads the film studies collection "Cinématographies" (Orizons, Paris). He also teaches at the Université Saint-Joseph de Beyrouth (IESAV - USJ).

Vartan Avakian

Vartan Avakian is an artist whose work encompasses video, photography and sculpture. He studied architecture and urban culture at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia and the Centre of Contemporary Culture in Barcelona, as well as communication arts at the Lebanese American University of Beirut with a film major. Avakian works and collaborates with artists and filmmakers on videos, movies and documentaries.

Salah Saouli

Fascinated by archaeology, Salah Saouli has collected in the last years photos, texts and other documents which he has integrated into his multimedia objects and installations in the form of fragmented material often at the edge of readability.

Salah Saouli prefers working with intricate structures and multidimensional overlaps. He favours a new way of thinking and presenting so that the form of his material are given priority over their origin or their historical places and periods.

In this respect, Salah Saouli used the effects of war on the inhabitants and cities as images of the past, using either images of destroyed buildings or photos of missing persons. The way these similarities have been elaborated and the memories of an incoherent past are the source of Salah Saouli's artistic language.

Gregory Buchakjian

Gregory Buchakjian is an art historian and transdisciplinary visual artist. He lives and works in Beirut where he was born in 1971. He holds a doctorate from l’Université Paris IV Sorbonne and is Director of the School of Visual Arts at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts (Alba). The relationship between image and narrative is ever present in his works such as Fouad El koury, Passing Time (Beirut: Kaph Books: 2017) and Traversées Photographiques. Le journal du Dr. Cottard (Beirut's Arab Foundation for Image, 2017).

Political instability, destruction and heritage are among the major issues addressed in his doctoral thesis entitled: “Habitats abandonnés de Beyrouth, guerres et mutations de l'espace urbain, 1860-2015 “which has led to a new publication called “Habitats abandonnés, une histoire de Beyrouth” (Beyrouth: Kaph Books, 2018, Valérie Cachard, ed.) along with his exhibition “Abandoned Dwellings, Display of Systems” presented at the Sursock Museum, Beirut in 2018 (Curated by Karina El Helou). Also in 2018, he was invited to participate in Lebanon's first pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture and in Works on Paper for the exhibition Cycles of Collapsing Progress in Tripoli. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Saradar Collection and of Alba's Editorial Board, and has taken part in many academic and artistic juries, including the Sursock Museum's Autumn Exhibition (2009), the Boghossian Prize (2012), Exposure (Beirut Art Center, 2013) and Beirut Art Residency (2017).

Fouad Elkoury

Fouad Elkoury graduated in 1979 in London with a degree in architecture. He then switched to photography and made his first report on daily life in Lebanon during the war. His images appear in Libération. In 1984, he issued his first book Beirut Aller-Retour.

In 1991, he and other photographers embarked on a photographic mission to Beirut' s devastated city, which led to the publication of Beyrouth centre-ville followed by an exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in 1993. The book will be a landmark in the history of photography.

As a result of the handshake between Israelis and Palestinians in Washington, he went to Gaza and the occupied territories. “Palestine, l'envers du miroir” will be published by Hazan (France) in 1996. Two years later the project was followed by “Liban Provisoire” and, in 1999, by “Suite Egyptienne” at Actes Sud (France). In 1997, he founded the Arab Foundation for the Image. A year later, he moved to Istanbul where, somewhere between East and West, he began a new photographic quest.

His new work “Sombres” will be presented at the Maison Européenne de la Photo in 2002. The exhibition will be accompanied by a movie entitled “Lettres à Francine” and by a book at Marval.

Since then, he has been combining photography and video as well as writing, with the release in 2004 of his first text book published by l'Oeil Neuf “La Sagesse du Photographe”, and the release of two films entitled “Moving Out” (2004) and “Welcome to Beirut” (2006).

His work has since included “Civilisation, fake = real ?” which documents Dubai's development, “On War and Love” (2006), a work that combines photographic compositions and writing, and was exposed at the Venice Biennale, and subsequently “What happened to my dreams” (2008-2009).

In 2010 and over a period of two years, he took pictures of abandoned Soviet military bases. His last two works are “Le Plus Beau Jour”, an installation on 3 screens exhibited at the Maison Européenne de la Photo in 2014, “Lettes à mon fils” published by Actes Sud (France) in 2016, and “Passing Time”, a book published by Kaph Books in Beirut in 2017.