Mohammad Shawky Hassan's queer experimental film Bashtaalak sa'at (Shall I compare You to a Summer’s Day?) will celebrate its world premiere as part of Forum Expanded at this year's Berlinale.
The Egyptian filmmaker Mohammad Shawky Hassan and the Lebanese multimedia artist Kinda Hassan work in collaborative processes of writing, filming, editing and sound design. The ADKDW Residency enabled them despite their different locations in Paris and Berlin, to complete Shall I compare You to a Summer’s Day? together and to network with other artists and institutions based in Cologne.
Taking Arab folktales as its formal reference, and Egyptian pop music as its primary sonic material, Shall I compare You to a Summer’s Day? is a queer contemporary take on One Thousand and One Nights. The project consists of a research-based essay film and a publication that attempt to expand the possibilities of pop cultural genera, such as music videos, musical theatre and TV series, in order to explore the ways in which a queer lover’s discourse could emerge from traditional modes of storytelling and various registers of language deeply rooted in Arab popular culture.