The poor image in a confrontation with canned image

“Most of the people now when you talk about found footage or recycling material they only think about the internet which is indeed a very important pool of material which we take it in consideration. But we were trying to think about where we could find more than found footage. It was quite the adventure that we have around three days going from the flee market to the AUC Library with the variation passing by some private collectors and trying to go to Maspero which doesn’t work out. I think it opened up for some of the participants and for us as well ideas that could be produced for future projects.” Marouan Omara

“Rethinking Poor Images” was led by Egyptian filmmaker and author Marouan Omara and English filmmaker Louis Henderson, and its aim was to examine images without intention. Personal archives, found footage, internet images no matter their quality come into play. The purpose is not to fetishise the poor image but rather experiment with unintentional footage and consider what it is and what it can become. Field trips included visiting the Friday Market, and looking into Mohamed Allam’s private collections of VHS Tapes, and other historical objects from the Amgad Naguib Collection. Five projects were produced during the workshop from 25 July to 15 August 2016.