Suspended Time

Yazan Khalili (Leaving Oslo)
Born in Syria 1981, Yazan Khalili is an architect, artist and cultural producer who works and lives in and out of Palestine. His art practice explores the relationship between the social and spatial elements of the built environment and the greater landscape. He is a founding member of Zan Design Studio, established in 2005, and was an artist-in-residence at the Delfina Foundation, London, in 2008. Khalili’s work has been featured in numerous exhibitions, including Sharjah Biennial XI (2013); #ComeTogether, Edge of Arabia, London (2012); The Future of a Promise, Venice Biennale, Italy (2011); The Jerusalem Show, Al Ma’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art, Jerusalem (2010, 2011). His writings and photography have been published in print and online publications such as Class and Race, Manifesta Journal, Frieze and Ibraaz.

Assem Nassar (From Ramallah)
Asem Naser is a student of visual arts at the International Art Academy Ramallah. Over the years he has worked as a photographer and graphic designer. His works begin from personal, but universal questions, and challenge all that is sacred so as to reveal a small part of the truth, which for most of the time is grotesque. His works are often narrative, and deal with legends as mirrors of all the unspoken corners of reality. Visually, he juxtaposes the narrative with abstract images in order to place the audience within the world of the legends.

Muhannad Salahat (Message to Obama)
Muhannad Salahat is a Palestinian filmmaker, journalist and writer currently based in Stockholm, Sweden. Since 2011 he has been working as a freelance filmmaker in Stockholm where he works with a number of Swedish film and media companies. He wrote scripts for a number of fiction and documentary films, and TV series. Salahat works as a consultant for a number of media organisations in the Arab world.

Alaa Al Ali (Journey of a Sofa)
Alaa Al Ali is a writer, filmmaker and multimedia artist from Palestinian origin. He was born and lives in Shatila, a refugee camp in Lebanon. Alali worked with local and international artists in making films and multimedia works, with focus on Palestinian refugee camps in Syria and Lebanon.

Amin Nayfeh (Interference)
Amin Nayfeh was born in Palestine in 1988 and spent his formative years moving between Jordan and Palestine. Despite an early interest in filmmaking, in 2010 he earned his B.S. in Nursing from A-Quds University in East Jerusalem. Two years later, he earned a Producing degree from the Red Sea Institute of Cinematic Arts in Jordan determined to produce and create films that bring genuine stories from the region.

Tarazan and Arab Nasser (Apartment 10/14)
Budding filmmakers and identical twin brothers Tarzan and Arab, real names Ahmed and Mohamed Abu Nasser, were born in 1988 in Gaza. After they graduated from Al-Aqsa University with a BA degree in Fine Arts, the brothers began to develop their filmic works. In 2010, Tarzan and Arab received the A. M. Qattan Foundation's prestigious Young Artist of the Year Award for their project Gazawood. They co-founded with Rashid Abdelhamid, a Palestinian architect and designer, “Made in Palestine Project” an independent arts initiative to create and promote contemporary visual art with a focus on Palestine. Their short film “Condom Lead” was competing in the short film competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 2013. They are currently developing a number of film projects.

Ayman Azraq (Oslo Syndrome)
Ayman Azraq is a Palestinian artist and filmmaker, born and raised in Bethlehem. He earned his MA degree in Fine Arts from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts in Oslo where he currently lives and works. Since 2002 he had worked as an editor, director and cameraman in multiple film projects. His short film “The Passport” was screened at the National Museum of Cinema in Turin (Italy), Cologne International Video Art Festival (Germany), among other places. His video and photography installation You From Now On Are Not Yourself was screened in venues in Spain, Norway, Denmark and the Gaza Strip. In 2012 he was an artist in residency in UNIDEE – University of Ideas at the Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto in Biella (Italy), where he produced Lets Talk About Wome and Football, a performance collaboration between the locals of Biella and other artists in residency.

Mahdi Fleifel (20 Handshakes for Peace)
Mahdi Fleifel is a Danish filmmaker of Palestinian origins. Born in Dubai, he was raised in the Ain El-Helweh refugee camp in Lebanon and later in the suburbs of Elsinore, Denmark.
He began filmmaking at an early age - a hobby he picked up from his father's obsession with video cameras. Fleifel studied at the NFTS in England under directors Udayan Prasad, Ian Sellar and Stephen Frears.
His first-year film, Arafat & I, screened in many international festivals and won prizes in Romania, Italy and the Czech Republic. In 2010 Fleifel and Irish producer Patrick Campbell set up the London-based Nakba FilmWorks through which they released Fleifel's autobiographical feature A World Not Ours. The film is currently on the festival circuit, the film has received multiple awards in Brussels, Krakow, Reykjavik and Abu Dhabi, and was the recipient of the Peace Film Award at the Berlinale 2013.

Asma Ghanem (Long War)
Asma Ghannem, born and raised in Damascus (Syria), currently lives and works in Ramallah, occupied Palestine. In 2013 she earned a BA degree in Visual Arts from the International Academy of Art – Palestine. In her work she explores that space between reality and illusion and its representation. Asma employs imagination to experiment with our perception of objects and concepts that surround us in our every day life. She works with photography, sound and film.