multiscreen HD video 8mn 34
Cairo, September 2011
Jean-Christian Bourcart and Selim Nassib, assisted by Mahmoud Farag

Tahrir square, in the middle of Cairo, is the symbolic place associated with the Egyptian revolution, where the massive protests were met with violent responses from authorities. As the result of the revolution was still uncertain, we wanted to pay tribute to the people who fought there. We filmed some of the protesters silently, just asking them to replay in their mind some very strong moments, to reconnect with the feelings of those days and nights, to awaken them again.

As we know, the use of social media to organize, communicate, and raise awareness played a predominant role during those events. People were organizing and were reporting at the same time, inventing a new paradigm of activism. We found online some incredible -sometimes shocking- scenes of personal courage, extreme violence, and crowd rage.

We also filmed Tahrir square on a normal day, looking like a vacant lot surrounded by incessant, noisy traffic. An employe dutifully waters the naked ground, as he was trying to grow something out of that revolution.

Those three elements - the silent remembering portraits, the footage of the dramatic events, Tahrir square on an ordinary day - are intertwined, proposing a meditation on relations between memories and documents, between individual stories and History.