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Yasmina Ben Ari Archive (Kran Film Collective)
Yasmina Benari was born in 1979 in Paris, France of a French mother and an Egyptian father. She studied Classical music (Violin) and Arts at the Collège des Enfants du Spectacle from age 15. She holds two Masters, one in Political Science and the other in Contemporary Arabic and Muslim world with a specialization in Gender issues.
She has lived in Egypt and Cuba working actively with documenting through film and other means, development issues and violence against women. She has collaborated on development projects, coordinated international conferences, and worked with awareness raising campaigns. All the way her work concentrated on Art as a new form of capacity building and empowerment tool.
Since then, Yasmina, has collaborated with the film and music theme of Kvindernes Verdens Danmark that you can see and hear at www.hennah.dk or www.freiheitphotography.com . After a Film Training with C:ntact and the Danish Film School in 2007, she wroteWith Open Eyes, and received a grant to direct it.
She has recently exhibited in the Cairo-based exhibition "Le Caire mon amour II". The video installation is titled "In the waiting room" with the will to recreate impressions she gathered from Cairenes following January 25th. She has filmed and documented Tahrir square during the 6 months following the fall of Mubarak's regime.
She is currently working on her next Feature Documentary, Flower and Fruit.
With Open Eyes follows four young female directors all originated from various Middle Eastern countries (Egypt, Jordan, Palestine and Lebanon) in a moment of their life. The four directors tell us about “their artistic eye”, the society they come from and the changes they work to promote. For the first time these artists will move from behind the camera to give us a piece of their reality, their thoughts, ambitions and fears.
The link between the eyes of these directors, their gaze upon the reality they face and their artistic production is here central. The question of Identity is also at core as close to all four of them have mixed origins and live in between various countries. Placed in a mobile environment or exiled most have studied abroad keeping a strong insight on the world they come from. This mobility gives them a contemporary approach to media and a global perspective to issues they film.
All between 23 and 34 years old, the directors of this film tend to represent in their own way, various aspects of the new generation of female directors in the Middle East. It is not the meaning here to give an analytic insight to female film production in the region. It is set and focused on four portraits, engaged artists and storytellers.