Private Project

Mourning After

“Mourning After” is a video work that portrays the relationship between two individuals of the same sex. It invites the viewer into the idiosyncrasies of the individuals’ relationship as it moves between expressions of love, vulnerability, awkwardness, desperation, and frustration. Questions may arise throughout the piece: How did the relationship get to this point? Who is at fault? Who is making the greater compromise? Has one invested more than the other? Is there a chance of working it out? The work focuses on power dynamics in intimate relationships, the ways in which partners may interact, the effects they have on one another, and the impact this takes on their individual lives. The video speaks to the emotional, mental, and behavioral burdens that people bring into and develop within relationships, and the difficulty to manage these objectively.

Even more, the piece speaks to the pressures that same-sex relationships may encounter in a heteronormative landscape, exposing how intimacy can be affected by pressures from society regardless of gender, race, or sexual orientation. Furthermore, the piece aims to humanize same-sex relationships (which may seem unnecessary and obvious) by showing the gamut of emotions that exist in virtually every relationship. I believe this is paramount, especially when seeking to bring visual acknowledgment of non-heteronormative relationships that are too often stigmatized and misrepresented in our society.

  • Fred Ata
    Director
  • Fred Ata
    Writer
  • Anthony Buscemi
    Writer
  • Fred Ata
    Producer
  • Fred Ata
    Key Cast
  • Anthony Buscemi
    Key Cast
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short, Other
  • Runtime:
    23 minutes 18 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    March 7, 2019
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Fred Ata

Fred Ata is a Lebanese immigrant from 1985. He immigrated to Massachusetts, USA with his family at the age of 6. There, he lived in a culturally Lebanese household and has great respect, affinity, and the need and want to contribute to Lebanon’s welfare, it's people, and to addressing and transforming the conflicts affecting the region.

He received a Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in conjunction with Tufts University in 2012, from where he continued to teach art in higher education for a year. After that he acquired a job at HarvardX as a video editor of online courses, where he currently still works full time. During his career at HarvardX, he continued his education and completed a second Master in Liberal Arts with a concentration in Middle Eastern Studies at the Harvard Extension School in March 2019

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Director Statement

As a visual artist, I use video and performance art to explore topics that involve acts of assimilation, specifically those of Lebanese immigrants into their new landscape. My art addresses how culture and identity can exist and change, while being careful to acknowledge that Lebanese immigrant culture may differ from the culture that was left behind. Considering generational gaps and the ebb between the comfort and awkwardness of familial relationships, it is important to me to push and probe definitions of intimacy between the American and Lebanese culture. Along with cultural identity, my art questions the ways in which gender identity can come to exist, portraying the varying lenses that can inform the construction of queerness. All of this is to say, that there is no one or right definition for identity and context is an important contributing factor.

For my thesis in Middle Eastern Studies, I focused on conflict transformation efforts in Lebanon and the need to redefine violence and ways we understand and address religion. I employed Johan Galtung's and Diane Moore's frameworks in order to locate a broader sense of violence to reinterpret a more inclusive Lebanese identity so as to embrace all the varying communities of Lebanon, including refugees.