Telematch Sadat

Wael Shawky’s Drama 1882 (re)stages a colonial conflict laden with treason and exploitation as a libretto across eight chapters and 44 hypnotic minutes, invoking questions of colonialism, collaboration, resistance, narrative, history, and, of course, drama.

A double-screen video of a Dodge Ram four-wheeler; and a man in a strange mask, who tries to build a wall from liquid tar.

In his newest cinematic opus, artist Wael Shawky once again entrusts masks and marionettes to rethink and challenge the narratives around the birth of Mediterranean culture. In a psychedelic journey among deities, heroes and titans, I Am Hymns of the New Temple reads classic mythology anew in the unique landscape of Pompeii, creating the ground for a timely and much needed discussion on received ideas surrounding cultural and national identity.

In this installment of Cabaret Crusades, which covers the 46 years from the end of the First Crusade, in 1099, to the beginning of the Second Crusade, in 1147, a cast of more than a hundred 200-year-old string marionettes from the Lupi collection in Turin enact Shawky’s highly original approach to staging and filming history; the puppets represent actual historical figures, and the project was filmed entirely in a church in Aubagne according to a cinematic shot breakdown.

This is the final film in Shawky’s Al Araba Al Madfuna trilogy (meaning ‘buried cart’), titled after a village in Egypt where shamans urged inhabitants to dig underground tunnels, revealing a network of ancient temples and Pharaonic treasures. Acted by children who have been dubbed in classical Arabic with adult voices, the layering of history and narratives over many centuries creates sensations of wonder, alienation and estrangement, exacerbated by the film’s production in negative, which further highlights the protagonists’ role reversals.

Wael Shawky’s epic marionette animation film offers a view on the history of the Crusades, retracing events that unfolded over a period of four years (1096-1099) and played a key role in subsequent historical developments, shaking to the core the Arab world and its relations with the West. This horror film of sorts provides a precise description of the places in the Middle East and Europe that formed the backdrop for the early Crusades, following the course of events after a Papal mandate sent half-a-million Franks on a military campaign to ‘reclaim’ Jerusalem from the Muslim armies. To bring these episodes alive, the production uses highly expressive 200-year-old marionettes from the Lupi collection in Turin, dressed in costumes of the Christian and Muslim armies of the time, allowing viewers to momentarily suspend disbelief and immerse themselves in a tragic history, distant in time but not effect.