17 Months - 12 Minutes

The footage in this video is based on several hours of recorded material that was uploaded by Syrian activists to YouTube between June 2011 and November 2012. Since the start of the revolution in March of 2011, many activists across Syria have documented their own actions as well as attacks and atrocities committed by the Assad regime and its allies. Initially activists hoped to show people outside of Syria what was unfolding on the ground to disprove the regime’s claim that terrorist groups, many of them foreigners, were taking over Syria with Western help.

The majority of this footage was shot in one Damascus neighborhood: Kafar Sousah which is located south of the Old City. Between June 20th, 2011 and May 22nd, 2016 the Kafar Sousah activists uploaded a total of 1090 clips to their YouTube account. This video is an attempt to trace the origins of the revolution in Kafar Sousah and make sense of what has become a proxy war for regional as well as world powers. It is also an attempt to unbury and reframe a vast archive created by Syrian activists and regime critics - many of whom have been arrested, tortured, killed or displaced. 

17 Months - 12 Minutes was finished in September 2017. It is also the last video in a set of three works with Refuge as the second and The Aleppo Room as third part. It premiered at The Delaware Contemporary in Wilmington, DE in November 2017.