"Treasure"
Mohammed Al-Suleiti is an avid Qatari fossil and artifacts collector, and claimed to have the largest private museum in the Middle East. Coming from a long line of pearl divers, he was the first in his family to do something else: help manage one of the largest oil platforms in the world. This led his to his passion for amateur archeology, and he's one of the premier experts of Qatar's buried past, even if he doesn't always share it with everyone. This is a small documentary film about him in his home and one cursory expedition he was willing to take me along for.
Documentary Film by Isabelle Carbonell, Edited by Sarah Cannon.
"The Knifemaker"
A short ethnographic film on a traditional and dying art in Damascus, Syria: forging knives. This knifemaker, a master of his art, has been doing this trade in the same one-room shop for the last 45 years. His knives are made for butchers - ultra sharp and best for meat, of a quality impossible to obtain with machine-cut metal.
Shot by Isabelle Carbonell. Edited by Sarah Cannon. Interpreter: Ghaith Shagouri.
"God Bless America"
An experimental short ethnographic film. New Orleans + Halloween + 2011 = Muammar Qaddafi and Osama Bin Laden, naturally.
God Bless America.
Shot by Isabelle Carbonell. Edited by Sarah Cannon.
"Nepal: Prayer Wheels"
The concept of the prayer wheel is a physical manifestation of the phrase "turning the wheel of Dharma," which describes the way in which the Buddha taught. According to the lineage texts on prayer wheels, prayer wheels are used to accumulate wisdom and merit (good karma) and to purify negativities (bad karma).The benefits attributed to the practice of turning the wheel are vast. Not only does it help wisdom, compassion and bodhichitta arise in the practitioner, it also enhances siddhis (spiritual powers such as clairvoyance, precognition, reading others thoughts, etc.).
Though I am not a practitioner of Buddhism, I have always been drawn to pagodas for their calming energy. My experience in Nepal seems to have a been a series of prayers, turning, wheels of thought spun into a journey. It's a voyage of sound, as much as prayer.
Shooting: Isabelle Carbonell
Editing: Sarah Cannon
"A Fool's Paradise: The Belly Dancer"
An experimental short ethnographic film. I was invited one night while in Damascus, Syria, to go to a "club" with a bellydancer. To my surprise, the club was out of town and we had to drive a while to get to it. When we arrived I was explained little except that somehow the club wasn't a good place — that, really, we shouldn't have even come. But we still entered a huge dome, were seated close to the stage, and I was told a bellydancer would soon appear. I started noticing how many middle-aged men there were... and all the women had faces carved out of plastic looking like Nancy Ajram (the singer), wearing tight clothing and smoking shisha. I tried to shrink in my chair not to attract attention. When the bellydancer started, everyone's attention was riveted to the stage, so I draped my scarf over my camera, which had been tucked away in my purse, and stole some shots. As a male Syrian friend later explained to me, "Ah, yes! I know exactly this kind of place... it's a place of failed marriages, deadbeats, and losers... this is where you take your hired girl for the night to go have fun."
Shot by Isabelle Carbonell. Edited by Sarah Cannon and Julie Rios Little.
"After School Special"
An experimental short ethnographic film. I walked out of Baalbeck, Lebanon - boasting one of the greatest Roman monuments still standing in the world today with some of the largest columns ever recorded in the history of man (some more than 6 feet across!) - and ran into a street seller asking three dollars for a Hezbollah T-shirt. And then another t-shirt seller, and another, and another. It was Hezbollah territory, obviously. Then a kid whizzes by me with a gun. When he passed me again, my camera was on, and I followed the group just a little ways down a path before shortly becoming the target myself.
Shot by Isabelle Carbonell. Edited by Sarah Cannon and Olivia Abtahi.
"We'll Get You Over On Our Side"
Though an experimental short film at heart, this was a foray into the largely Western-looking ideal of toys sold on the streets of Dubai, UAE and Istanbul, Turkey. Many of these dolls are built to do one thing and one thing only - not even to be played with. Not a single person passing by had blond hair, or blue eyes, or any physical incarnation close to what the dolls aspired to represent. Chaotic, overwhelming, these mechanized versions of self were endlessly twitching, tinkling melancholic melodies, being creepy, and above all, seemed to appear everywhere I went. No one ever bought anything anywhere I stopped to watch them. I have see these light-up one-trick-pony toys everywhere I've gone without fail, but haven't always managed to capture them on video. They're invading, culturally incongruous, useless, cheap, China-made, annoying, and will soon be coming to a street corner near you.
Shot by Isabelle Carbonell. Edited by Sarah Cannon.
"Detroit Penny Slots"
An experimental short ethnographic film about the world of penny slot machines in one of the grand casinos of Detroit, Michigan.
Shot by Isabelle Carbonell. Edited by Sarah Cannon.
"After Bitches" in Petra, Jordan
A trio of bedouins, probably from the Bedu tribe, climbing the en-Nejr mountain in Petra, Jordan, on their donkeys.
Petra is a historical and archeological city in Jordan famous for its rock cut architecture and aqueducts. The bedouin tribe featured in this clip have been residing in Petra since the last century or so, and claim they're the direct descendants of the Nabateans who carved the city out of sheer rock near the 6th century BC. Petra has been described as "a rose-red city half as old as time" and it truly feels that way when the throngs of tourists dry up. But the real charm resides in its residents, who used to comfortably live in the caves Petra offers up until the mid 1980s, when they were forcibly "relocated" to a cinderblock trailer-park-esque village right outside Petra. Most of their living hours are still spent down in ruins as their main economy is the tourism trade. Though comparatively recent inhabitants of Petra, they come closest to representing its soul in the living flesh, comedy and all.