ETEL ADNAN WORDS IN EXILE

The film reconstructs through an array of visual fragments, a multiplicity of languages, of peoples and their identities, the unique portrait of the Greek-Syrian poet and painter Etel Adnan. The film is based on Adnan’s correspondence with professor of history Fawwaz Traboulsi and on fragments of her conversations with Vouvoula Skoura as recorded in Paris and the Greek island of Skopelos. Etel facing the sea – the Mediterranean as the “conjunctive link” of cultural experience – creates her own geography of cities and women. Etel Adnan has lived through and experienced the troubles of the 20th century in Europe and the Middle East. her origins caught between the two worlds, she attempts to comprehend their differences and is able to synthesize them under her deeply humanistic gaze. At the same time, she retraces those minute Greek instances in memories of her mother and recollections of her father in a universe of tales and poetry composed in Arabic.