Sylvia Kristel – Paris

Manon de Boer, Belgium, 2003, 39’

Sylvia Kristel – Paris is a portrait of Sylvia Kristel, best known for her role in the 1970’s erotic cult classic Emmanuelle, as well as a film about the impossibility of memory in relation to biography.

Cinema Fouad

Mohamed Soueid, Lebanon, 1993, 41’

Cinema Fouad is a portrait of Khaled El Kurdi, a young Syrian trans woman living in Beirut. The documentary follows her journey from soldier to cabaret dancer in an effort to raise funds for her gender affirming surgery.

double bill #36

Through the smoke of a cigarette, an interviewee can pause, breathe, and think before answering the question. Manon de Boer and Mohamed Soueid both interview women who portray performers. While dancing and applying makeup, Khaled El Kurdi, in Cinema Fouad (1993), mourns the loss of a lover but also dreams of gender reassignment surgery. In Sylvia Kristel - Paris (2003), the Dutch actress recounts the start of her career and her rise as a sex symbol. Both live very different lives with differing social acclaim and political contexts, but what connects them is the act of performance.

That performance is evident through two synchronous plays of seduction. On one hand, the observer is seduced by both women, put under a spell not to leave their presence. We are so close, we hear them breathe. At the same time, they themselves are seduced by the possibility of a new self. Having recently left their homes, their arrival in Paris and Beirut becomes central in their personal exposés, as the cities offer them a renegotiation of who they are.

And while De Boer offers a dissonant repetition, questioning Kristel’s story, a shifting narration becomes key in Cinema Fouad. The idea that a biography tells the truth and the notion of a stationary self grow hazy through smoke infused with time and transition. Both filmmakers capture this ambiguity, inviting wariness. The women breathe, speak, smoke, pause—and most of all, they perform.

Matti Ullrich

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Language French, Arabic
Subtitles Dutch, English

Bio Matti Ullrich

Matti Ullrich is a curator, researcher, and producer working across different fields, including film, installation, fine art, and time-based media. He has collaborated on a wide range of projects and exhibitions, most recently at the Pinault Collection Residency in Lens, France. He is currently on the curatorial team at the Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival and has worked in various positions at the Berlinale. Matti is drawn to innovative, cross-disciplinary, and critically engaged artistic practices.

Bio Manon de Boer

The experience of time is central to Manon de Boer’s work. Her films create an expanded sense of time, rooted in the conditions of their making. Rather than conforming to normative notions of time as functional and productive, they allow a sense of the present to emerge and unfold. De Boer works primarily with moving images, but increasingly explores sculpture and installation in relation to her films. In 2021, she also made the performance Ghost Party (1), in collaboration with Latifa Laâbissi.

Bio Mohamed Soueid

Mohamed Soueid (Beirut, 1959) is a Lebanese writer, director, and producer. He currently heads the Documentary Department at Al Arabiya News Channel. His works include Tango of Yearning (1998), Nightfall (2000) and The Insomnia Of A Serial Dreamer (2020). He also wrote the following books: Postponed Cinema - Lebanese Films During the Civil War (1986), O Heart - A Film Autobiography On The Late Movie Theatres Of Old Beirut (1996), and Cabaret Souad (2004).

yanco’s double-bill series explores private and public Belgian archives, from museums to national film schools. Guest curators pair a Belgian short film with a companion audiovisual work to create a thematic or formal dialogue. Each resulting micro programme includes curatorial notes alongside a supporting essay, article, or interview