Mapping Lessons

Through the diary entries of the film's main protagonist K., we learn about her return from post-revolutionary Russia to her home in Greater Syria, in which, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, individual communities are trying to find a way to autonomy. Thanks to the juxtaposition with the Russian past, presented through shots from Soviet film classics such as Esfir Shub's Spain or Kinoglaz by Dziga Vertov, and the Syrian present, portrayed through various mobile phone footage, the director draws parallels between two incompatible realities and creates a multimedia essay on neo-colonialism and independence.

 

“After the crushing of our revolution in Egypt in 2013, Mapping Lessons began as a daydream. This film is a visual conversation between political struggles across time and space, from anti-colonial battles against the French and British in the 1920s, to the Syrian revolution in 2011, 1936 Spain, a revisionist memory of Russian Soviets, and the Paris Commune amongst others. This film was my way of relating our current neocolonial condition with the past, all with an eye on what to do the next time.
" P. Rizk 

Philip Rizk is a filmmaker living between Cairo and Berlin. His most recent film is entitled Mapping Lessons. Together with Jasmina Metwaly, he directed the feature film “Out on the Street” (2015), which premiered at the Berlinale and was part of the German pavilion at the Venice Biennale later that year. Rizk is a member of the Mosireen video collective behind the archive 858.ma. His texts have appeared online, in journals and in collected volumes including “2011 is not 1968: a letter to an onlooker”. Rizk was a resident of the DAAD program in Berlin in 2016-2017. He regularly teaches in classrooms and workshops.