Maverick underground American/ Lebanese musician and ethnomusicologist Alan Bishop (Sun City Girls, Sublime Frequencies), lands as a stranger in Cairo, soon after the 2011 uprisings and teams up with three young Egyptian musicians for the translation of his old songs into Arabic. Under Bishop’s mentorship, this unlikely collaboration transforms into a band, The Invisible Hands. Structured around fly-on-the-wall scenes, archival ghost apparitions, absurd cameos and poetic diary narrations by Bishop, and unfolding between the two critical elections, that marked the post ‘Arab Spring’ period in Egypt, the film juxtaposes the tragicomedy of politics and art-making in the so-called periphery.
Marina Yioti & Georges Salameh
Marina Gioti is a filmmaker/ visual artist born and based in Athens, Greece. Her work has been screened and exhibited worldwide at museums and international film festivals like Berlinale and Toronto. She has participated in three art biennials and most recently at documenta 14, where she presented her debut feature documentary, The Invisible Hands.She studied Chemical Engineering, Environmental Management, Filmmaking, and Media and Communication in Greece, UK and Belgium. With cinema at the core of her interdisciplinary practice, Gioti explores cinematic narrative, techniques and aesthetics across media, through her videos, installations and media art works. She has a healthy obsession with found objects, stories and histories, often forgotten or parallel to the official record. An important part of her interests, expressed largely through her media art practice, is situated at the intersection of art, science and the environment.
Georges Salameh is a Greek-Lebanese artist whose work is predominantly lens-based. He lived in Lebanon, Cyprus, Greece, France and Sicily.He studied cinema and history of art at University of Paris 8 Saint-Denis (1991–1994), and has worked in Greek and international cinematographic and audiovisual productions.
Since 1998, he has directed shorts, documentaries, experimental/essay films, & created photography and video installations. His work has been exhibited in museums, galleries, and international festivals.
Since 2011, he has been a co-founding member of the Depression Era project. Since 2015, he has been a contributing editor of the Urbanautica Institute, a platform for contemporary photography.
