Experimental documentary diptych
Keep Recording: 40 min, SD digital video, 2009
Still Recording: 50 min, HDV video, 2010
Keep Recording / Still Recording is an experimental documentary diptych. The first part, Keep Recording, captures a portrait of Egyptian society in 2008 through a succession of seemingly banal scenes: conversations with friends and family, daily happenings on Cairo’s streets, moments from my own life filmed almost at random. The method is oblique and deliberately sarcastic — an indirect way of placing everyday life in its social and political context.
The second part, Still Recording, applies the same approach to my daily experiences in the United States while studying there in 2009 — a pivotal year, as Obama had just been elected the first African American president. Having lived in the US for five years, I turned my camera on the ‘other’: a portrait of American daily life, made through the same lens of the banal, and driven by a curiosity about how stereotypes hold up — or don’t — when you look closely at both cultures, Egyptian and American, from the inside.
Previous screenings
- Zawya Cinema — Cairo, Egypt, 2015
- Temple University — Philadelphia, PA, USA, 2009
- Kala Art Institute — Berkeley, California, USA, 2010
- California College of the Arts — San Francisco, California, USA, 2010
- Manifesta Biennale — Murcia, Spain, 2010
- Kansas State University — Manhattan, Kansas, USA, 2011
- Flemish-Netherlands Institute — Cairo, Egypt, 2011
Bassem Yousri 