ismaël (Mohamed Ismail Louati) is a filmmaker, visual artist and writer. He is the author, editor, producer and director of approximately twenty films, art videos and audio-visual works including Leila’s Blues (premiered at Cannes Film Festival Director’s Fortnight 2018) and Babylon (Grand Prix at FID Marseille and Universities Award at DOC Lisboa 2012). He is currently producing 373, Pasteur street, a short essay; shooting The Syrians, a documentary about Syrians in the Lebanon (granted by Dubai Film Festival, Tunisian-French coproduction Fund, Kamal Lazaar Foundation, Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, …) and developing his first narrative feature A woman (granted by Tunisian Ministry of Culture in 2018). He also co-founded several filmmaker’s, artist’s and poets’ collectives and associations besides curating contemporary art exhibitions. His artistic and theoretical work revolves around the questioning of the image and its political shaping in a globalized world.
Against All Odds/Présent Composé
Visual essay by Yasmina Reggad & ismaël
Published in: Pas de Deux: 5 x 2 x 2, Mediterranean dialogues, argobooks, 2014
2014
PAS DE DEUX: 5 x 2 x 2 was a residency project encouraging Mediterranean dialogues between artists from the southern Mediterranean and curators from the northern and eastern sides of the Mediterranean Sea.
Participating artists and curators: Anna Raimondo (curator and artist, Italy), Younes Baba Ali (artist, Morocco), Basak Senova (curator, Turkey), Simohamed Fettaka (artist, Morocco), Yasmina Reggad (curator, France), Ismael Leamsi (artist, Tunisia), Charlotte Bank (art historian and curator, Germany/Switzerland), Younes Atbane (artist, Morocco), Nora Razian (curator, Lebanon), Atef Berredjem (artist, Algeria).
They met for a two-week residency to create a dialogue about artistic approaches to the question: “Where are we now?”. That question – central to the Marrakech Biennale in 2014 – prompted collaborative reflections focusing on the artist’s creative process as well as on the curator’s more theoretical reading of it. The conversations and themes of the residency finally took material form in a book: each artist/curator pair produced an essay evoking the key themes addressed during the residency. The first book launch took place in Marrakech in February 2014, during the Marrakech Biennale.
Babylon
Film
Tunesia, 2012, 119′
Directed, cinematography, and sound by ismaël, Youssef Chebbi, Ala Eddine Slim
Edited by ismaël, Ala Eddine Slim
Produced by Exit Productions
2012
On a virgin territory in the wild, people arrive. Soon, a city is built out of nowhere. Inhabited by several nationalities, people speaking different languages. This new Babylon surrounded by trees and animals, is rapidly taking the form of a city at once ordinary and extraordinary… After the insurrection erupted in Libya in the spring of 2011, more than a million people flocked to neighbouring Tunisia in search of a safe haven from the escalating violence. When a massive refugee camp was hastily constructed near the Ras Jdir border checkpoint in Tunisia, a trio of filmmakers carried their cameras in and began filming with no agenda. This on-the-fly chronicle of the camp’s installation, operation, and dismantling captures a postmodern Babel complete with a multinational population of displaced folk, a regime of humanitarian aid workers, and international media that broadcasts its image to the world.