Farah Kassem on Filming from Interiors

A woman, too afraid to leave her house, begins to make a series of calls to authorities reporting suspicious activity happening outside her window.We kick off our premiere podcast with a conversation with Farah Kassem about her award-winning short documentary film, Cleaning Schaerbeek (2017), available to stream for a limited number of days, courtesy of the filmmaker. Farah Kassem is a filmmaker from Lebanon whose work inspires us to think about interior-based filmmaking practices. Set entirely inside the apartment in Molenbeek, a neighborhood in Brussels known for its mix of North African, Turkish, Moroccan, and other immigrant communities, Kassem approaches the topic of paranoia in the wake of terrorist attacks in Paris that had been traced back to the neighborhood. Working with self-imposed limitations, she crafts a well-composed, eloquent, and sharp short film about xenophobia with a thinly veiled sense of absurdity.  Cleaning Schaerbeek premiered at Warsaw Film Festival in 2017 and went on to screen at several other festivals across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. It was awarded Best Short Documentary in the 2019 Brussels Independent Film Festival. In this conversation, Docs in Orbit contributor Christina Zachariades revisits the film with Farah, who is quarantined in Tripoli, Lebanon, and working on her upcoming feature documentary, We Are Inside.  Relevant Links: Watch Cleaning SchaerbeekHammana Artist House: multidisciplinary art residency space with a focus on performing arts, located in the village of Hammana near Beirut, LebanonChicken & Egg Pictures: platform supporting women nonfiction filmmakers, providing financial grants and creative mentorship.For show notes, visit docsinorbit.com and be sure to follow us on social media @docsinorbit