Akram Zaatari’s ‘The Landing’ also pays tribute to the late Emirati artist Hassan Sharif
For The Landing, a Sharjah Art Foundation-funded piece that screened at last month's Berlin Film Festival, Lebanese artist and filmmaker Akram Zaatari headed to the less high-profile filmmaking hub of Sharjah. For his latest project, he brought the urban and the desert together at Shaabiyat Al-Ghurayfah, a public housing project built for members of the local Al Kutby tribe in Al Madam in the early 1980s. By 1994, the homes had been abandoned and the residents moved on to newer housing projects, and the desert's shifting sands had been left to reclaim the area.
The Sharjah location isn't the film's only UAE link. When the director shot the film, he admits he was heavily influenced by late Emirati artist Hassan Sharif. Although the Dubai artist was not one of the people who lived in Shaabiyat Al-Ghurayfah, his performance pieces frequently took place in similiar sites, away from the UAE's major urban hubs, and the director admits he was informed by Sharif's work on the set of The Landing, even going so far as to recreate one of the artist's pieces in the film.
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