An Untimely film for every one and no one (2018)

Origin: Palestine Armenia USA | Documentary | Director: Ayreen Anastas | 90 minutes

An Untimely Film For Every One and No One

by Ayreen Anastas (Pal), Rene Gabri (Iran), documentary 90 min. Palestine / Armenia / USA 2018. World premiere at Berlinale 2018.

In 2007 Ayreen Anastas made a journey through Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, and Tunisia, collecting materials for a film with the working title A Film for Every One and No One. The film was intended as an adaptation of Nietzsche’s “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” in the contemporary Arab world. Since that initial material was collected, much of the region and the world have been thrown into ever-greater tumult. The relevance, force, and meaning of the materials have also shifted significantly. The film remains unfinished. 

Director's interview: https://www.arsenal-berlin.de/en/berlinale-forum/archive/program-archive/2018/program-forum-expanded/artists-expanded/ayreen-anastas.html

In a collaboration with the artist Rene Gabri and the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, an attempt is made to approach the material in a collective manner and make an untimely version of it. For Nietzsche, untimely meant, among other things, something not belonging to the order of the tastes, expectations, and procedures of its time. If the original film was to stage an encounter between the writing and thinking of Nietzsche and the contemporary conditions of life as manifested in the Arab world, then this film stages that encounter in the lapse and disordering, in the historical black hole which has opened up in the ten years since the meeting was staged.