Raed Rafei

History

Raed Rafei is a multimedia journalist, media trainer and filmmaker with over ten years of experience reporting on international topics in a variety of mediums. Born and raised in Tripoli, Lebanon, at the height of his country’s civil war, he has a keen interest in the human stories that lie at the heart of the transformations witnessed in the Arab world in recent years. To that end, he is regularly working on videos, documentaries and hybrid films. For over ten years, he worked as a reporter for national and international publications covering political, social and economic issues in the Middle East. He also worked as a researcher, producer and director on many TV news reports and documentaries for channels like Al-Jazeera, CNN and ARTE. Since 2011, Rafei has produced independent hybrid films. He made two feature films: 74 (The Reconstitution of a Struggle) (2012) and Here I am … Here you are (2017); and two short films: Prologue (2011) and Salam (2017). His films have screened at international film festivals and received many awards. Raed Rafei is currently pursuing a PhD in Film and Digital Media at the University of California in Santa Cruz. His research and project interests lie in hybrid films that explore intersections between documentary and fiction to challenge narratives about his country’s tumultuous history. His film work has documented Lebanese leftist student movements from the 1970s through the modern lens of the Arab Spring, engaging young activist to question notions of revolution and change between past and present. In more recent work, he has focused on intimate narratives as a means to explore the real and imagined boundaries between East and West and the questions of identity and sexuality in a globalized age. Raed speaks Arabic, English, French and Italian fluently. He also speaks basic Spanish and Japanese.

Movies

Al-Atlal
Editor
A drawing of an ancient bathhouse in a French travel book to the Middle East sparks a visual poem, inspired by the Arab poetry tradition of "standing by the ruins". The ambivalence of the five-hundred-year-old image gestures towards enduring capitalist and colonial power dynamics. Pleasure and pain, seduction and domination, archives and ruins, histories of sex, and histories of empire, all commingle in this essay film. What transpires is a web of visible and invisible threads where homosexuality in the Middle East today seems to be enmeshe
Al-Atlal
Producer
A drawing of an ancient bathhouse in a French travel book to the Middle East sparks a visual poem, inspired by the Arab poetry tradition of "standing by the ruins". The ambivalence of the five-hundred-year-old image gestures towards enduring capitalist and colonial power dynamics. Pleasure and pain, seduction and domination, archives and ruins, histories of sex, and histories of empire, all commingle in this essay film. What transpires is a web of visible and invisible threads where homosexuality in the Middle East today seems to be enmeshe
Al-Atlal
Writer
A drawing of an ancient bathhouse in a French travel book to the Middle East sparks a visual poem, inspired by the Arab poetry tradition of "standing by the ruins". The ambivalence of the five-hundred-year-old image gestures towards enduring capitalist and colonial power dynamics. Pleasure and pain, seduction and domination, archives and ruins, histories of sex, and histories of empire, all commingle in this essay film. What transpires is a web of visible and invisible threads where homosexuality in the Middle East today seems to be enmeshe
Al-Atlal
Director
A drawing of an ancient bathhouse in a French travel book to the Middle East sparks a visual poem, inspired by the Arab poetry tradition of "standing by the ruins". The ambivalence of the five-hundred-year-old image gestures towards enduring capitalist and colonial power dynamics. Pleasure and pain, seduction and domination, archives and ruins, histories of sex, and histories of empire, all commingle in this essay film. What transpires is a web of visible and invisible threads where homosexuality in the Middle East today seems to be enmeshe
Queer Utopia: From Stonewall to Tell Garden
Director
A video essay by Raed Rafei.
Here I Am...Here You Are
Producer
Eccomi ... Eccoti unfolds as a virtual road trip navigating between Italy and Lebanon. Conditioned to live in a long-distance relationship with his partner because of strict European visa regulations, the director patches together the shared moments in an attempt to create a possible day-to-day reality for their couple. With a lyrical, ambient soundscape set atop a dreamy, atmospheric visual style that oscillates between still photography and moving images, the film explores what it means to be gay in contemporary Beirut and existential discomfort that blocks one from reaching a sense of complete-ness. Does such in-completeness have to do, in particular, with being gay? Or is it related to a grander malaise endemic to the human condition?
Here I Am...Here You Are
Director
Eccomi ... Eccoti unfolds as a virtual road trip navigating between Italy and Lebanon. Conditioned to live in a long-distance relationship with his partner because of strict European visa regulations, the director patches together the shared moments in an attempt to create a possible day-to-day reality for their couple. With a lyrical, ambient soundscape set atop a dreamy, atmospheric visual style that oscillates between still photography and moving images, the film explores what it means to be gay in contemporary Beirut and existential discomfort that blocks one from reaching a sense of complete-ness. Does such in-completeness have to do, in particular, with being gay? Or is it related to a grander malaise endemic to the human condition?
Salam
Editor
In the privacy of her own home, a Syrian woman shares her thoughts and feelings, talking about her existence, and her desire to be open about her sexuality in a conservative society.
Salam
Writer
In the privacy of her own home, a Syrian woman shares her thoughts and feelings, talking about her existence, and her desire to be open about her sexuality in a conservative society.
Salam
Director
In the privacy of her own home, a Syrian woman shares her thoughts and feelings, talking about her existence, and her desire to be open about her sexuality in a conservative society.
74 (La reconstitution d'une lutte)
Director
Between March and April 1974, students at the American University of Beirut occupied university offices for 37 days, demonstrating against a tuition increase. Fast forward to 2011, in the midst of the Arab Spring, filmmakers Rania and Raed Rafei decide to step back and reconsider the present situation in the light of the 1970s, a period pregnant with hope, but also a prelude to civil war. With the Lebanese student revolt of 1974 as their starting point, the filmmakers direct an absorbing documentary on the core issues of revolution and democracy. In addition to a meticulous re-enactment, they include theatrical improvisations in which activists give their interpretations of the student leaders’ actions in 1974.