Join video artist Rania Stephan for a screening and discussion of her award-winning video, The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni (2011). Stephan’s film, what she calls “an archaeology of images, identity, and memory,” ponders one of the great disappearing acts in the history of global cinema: the legacy and still-mysterious death of Egyptian actress Soad Hosni. Hosni’s creative labor and iconic roles helped to define Egyptian cinema, and her personal life, never far from the public eye, generated a robust media legacy of its own. Drawing on footage from more than sixty rare videotapes that took Stephan over a decade to collect, the video emphasizes not official film archives, but the analog consumer electronics that kept Hosni’s work alive informally. Registration is required.

Programmed by Kaveh Askari & Salah Hassan (Professors of English, MSU).