Anhar Salem

Historia

Born in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia with a multi-ethnic background at the beginning of the nineties. Studied IT in Arab Open University. As an autodidact graphic designer and video artist, her work attempt to explore/open public and private spaces, associated with subjects like everyday life, women, and social media. Through small personal equipment, she allows herself to get involved in more private spaces, building new relationships, shrinking gaps, and questioning the capability of making a self-representation in marginalized societies.

Películas

Love & Revenge
Director
Posing, selfies, and the imaginary freedom through a journey into a girl teen's practises on social media. The desire to exist only as an image collapsed when she lost the control over her avatar. From a distance, Anhar casts two girls who are shooting and acting for the movie as fictionalized versions of themselves. Exploring and hovering between private and public life.
Tag Me if You Can
Director
Tag Me if You Can combines found footage of daily expressions on social media, blurring the distinction between private and public spaces. These sequences are accompanied by a selection of mainstream commercials that star Saudis, rather than people from abroad, owing to the rising popularity - or what the artist calls "the new media revolution" - of home videos, YouTube shows, and vlogs. Through inlays and cut editing, Anhar Salem breaks the strict opposition between these two regimes of images, the first related to television and the second to individual expressions. Her red Zentai suit-clad performance recreate wedding rituals in the kingdom to a score that includes commercial jingles, matrimonial songs and K-Pop tunes sung by young Arab girls. By using Instagram's red filter, she presents different social media practices on an everyday scale while further masking the identities of the performers, creating, as it were, vacuums in the map of the internet.
Nonself-Portrait
A documentary shot in Medina, Saudi Arabia, where an illuminating narrator leads a journey through the city’s neighborhoods, landmarks, and iconic features.
Diamanda s'en va
A secret organization prepares to hack a data center. To remain anonymous during their meetings, the hackers take on the appearance of missing members of the organization.
Mami, La Moula
Director
Fatima, in the beginning of her twenties. She cooks, takes care of her child and does her everyday house cleaning. Gradually, her life begins to change, she worked as a cleaner, her husband abused her, she asked for help, and then escaped away to live in a social house. After escaping with the hope of having a better life, she is suddenly faced by another problem related to the status of her child. The director was shooting with an iPhone since meeting Fatima to make a semi-fiction movie. But instead, Anhar kept the footage and continued shooting with her personal phone for documenting Fatima's new dramatic changes more closely, in the sake of keeping the same relationship and distance. At the same time, the film tries to emphasize Fatima’s emotional/occasional status throughout the film by using more vivid images connected to her situation, places, and old memories as an ex-dancer back in Algeria.
The Sleeping Sun Station
Director
Two memories of mine narrated by my nephews, asking their mother (my older sister) if the images they recall are fake or real. Being raised up by my old sister and growing up in the same place, the film reflects how everything is related, revolving around the same experiences and memories.
The Dying Carousel
Director
One part of a long-term documentary project revolving around the death of places.
The Traveler's Longing to Pray
Editor
A year has passed since the death of my mother and two of my sisters.
Rain
Director
While her father was in his deathbed, she and her nieces were playing in the rain.
Eyes
Editor
A short documented visit to the ophthalmologist by Anhar Salem
Two Guitars
Dancer
Two guitars, the 24th underground short film made by the Saudi female filmmaker: Anhar Salem.
Two Guitars
Editor
Two guitars, the 24th underground short film made by the Saudi female filmmaker: Anhar Salem.
Two Guitars
Director
Two guitars, the 24th underground short film made by the Saudi female filmmaker: Anhar Salem.
Eyes
Director
A short documented visit to the ophthalmologist by Anhar Salem
Bridge
Editor
Streets of Jeddah.
Bridge
Director
Streets of Jeddah.
Two Guitars
Dancer
Two guitars is the 24th underground short film made by the Saudi female director Anhar Salem
Two Guitars
Editor
Two guitars is the 24th underground short film made by the Saudi female director Anhar Salem
Two Guitars
Director
Two guitars is the 24th underground short film made by the Saudi female director Anhar Salem