Samy Benammar
Biography
Samy Benammar is a Montreal-based artist and film critic. His work as a writer and filmmaker has developed as a form of experimentation around socio-political issues inherited from his Algerian and working-class origins. His films include kaua’i’o’o (2023), peugeot pulmonaire (2021) and sous-ex (2022). They have been shown in festivals across Canada and abroad, and are distributed by Winnipeg Film Group, Vidéographe and CFMDC. His writings can be read in magazines such as Hors Champs, 24 images and Panorama cinéma. He is also conducting a PhD in research and creation focusing on the Wilaya of Batna, Algeria, and colonial photography.
He listens to the bleating of the goat. No matter how domesticated, they remain unpredictable, and resist docility.
Filmography
- kauaʻi ʻōʻō | 2023 | HD | Color | Stereo | 3min
In 2000, the International Union for Conservation of Nature officially declared the Kauai Oʻō extinct. All that remains of this endemic bird of the Hawaiian island of the same name is the recording of its singing by ornithologist David Boynton.
Between territories and treetops, I’m still looking for a trace of the vanished birds.
- colosse | 2022 | HD | Color | Stereo | 20min
Only one horse is left standing against the digital flood, but the storm is getting stronger. We may already have brought down the colossi.
The story of a collapse.
Tribute to Malcolm Le Grice and Brian Eno realized in the video game Red Dead Redemption II.
- sous-ex | 2022 | HD | Color | Stereo | 7min
The silence of the dark rooms is followed by the screaming of the scanner that resurrects our sweaty embraces on the film. Of this caress, there remains only the violence of an image; of your sex a shadow; of our fluids, an emulsion; of our loves, solitudes.
- peugeot pulmonaire | 2021 | HD | Color | Stereo | 23min
The east of France is dying, we see a half-empty factory and a mass of workers caught between precariousness and impotence. X-rays of their calcified lungs scroll by at the rhythm of a mechanical press under which one suffocates.
- nana | 2017 | HD | Color | Stereo | 3min
In the minutes following your death, a time capsule. The house is empty, you have just left. I will not see you again.
En développement
- adieu ougarit
In 2012, Mohamed saw his best friend gunned down by armed militia on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria, and the blood spilled into the lake water contaminated his memory. Ten years later, the reflections of the Laurentians recall the trauma of Mohamed, now a refugee in Quebec. I ask him if he’d like to excavate the memories, repair the fears by isolating us for a few days in the most distressing calm he’s ever experienced. He talks about death, immigration and anger. We wonder how and why to tell this story.
- Avant seriana
Mom, you brought me back to our homeland. All I know about these harsh landscapes I learned from books written by the hand that burned these mountains. I try to undo the colonial myths engraved into my memory, but the hills escape my gaze. Do you think I, too, have become the white djinn spoken of by the legends surrounding our martyrs?