“What Existed Yesterday Might Disappear Tomorrow” is a film program co-presented by ArteEast and Tribe, curated by Hind Mezaina, Tribe’s Moving Image Editor.

This screening is part of the legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, which preserves and presents over 17 years of film and video programming by ArteEast. In addition to the online screening on artearchive.org from October 13-18, the program will be screened in-person at Alliance Française in Dubai on October 12, with an introduction and post screening discussion with Hind Mezaina and Nezar Andary, professor of cinema and literature, curator of film and book festivals.

With text by Hind Mezaina

Nadim Choufi’s The Sky Oscillates between Eternity and Its Immediate Consequences is an eighteen-minute film set in a space colony on Earth composed entirely of digitally rendered environments and stock footage. Based on news about the construction of Mars Science City in Dubai, the film addresses how the future of smart cities relies on the promise of “sustainable” closed systems in the face of health and ecological crises. Two protagonists narrate how the control and exploitation of environmental life cycles and organisms become a blueprint to achieve such futuristic visions.

With text by Hind Mezaina

The film Memory Box, by artists and filmmakers Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, is about the images and collective history that are not found in official history books. It is also steeped with their older artworks like Postcards of War, Lasting Images, and Two Suns in a Sunset, which viewers familiar with their work will instantly recognize.