Knowbox dance
- Dec 1, 2019
- 2 min read

Ghazal by Jana G. Younes

kNOwBOX dance Film Festival 2019

Official Selection Filmmaker Spotlight

Ghazal by Jana G. Younes

6:18

Beirut, Lebanon

Ghazal takes us on a flirt journey with a game of time and its flow, where moving backwards seems as natural as forward.

Synopsis

- Ghazal in Arabic, is a form of amatory flirt or ode, originating in Arabic poetry.

A young woman is either getting ready to leave, or coming from a night out.

A young man is sitting in his chair, setting up domino pieces.

With a sudden power outage, both seem to be triggered by the light left in the space.

And what begins doesn’t seem to end, and what ends never seems to have been.

There is no such thing, at the level of love, that causes -must- precede effects.

Ghazal is a playful game of time and the direction of its flow.

Technical Sheet

Directed by Jana G. Younes

Starring Rebecca Dahrouj & Wafa Bouti

Choreographer Jens Bjerregaard

Director of Photography Shadi Chaaban

Steadicam Operator Christopher Kechichian

Executive producer Reine Semaan

Co-Executive producer Christelle Younes

ProductionManager Faraj Aoun

Production Assistant Lewis Semrani

Understudy dancers Mazen Nehlawi & Dasha Amer

Light projections Elie Noujaim

Art Director Issa Kandil

Assistant Art director Hanady Medlej

Make up Richard El gharib

Assistant Director Genia Boustany

1 st Camera Assistant Jad Tannous

2 nd Camera Assistant Lea Skayem

Gaffer Dany Challita

Continuity Cybelle Nader

Sound Design & Mix Cedric Kayem

Music Toni Geitani

Music Mix Ziad Moukarzel

Editor Noel Paul

Online Miled Boulos

Colorist Belal Hibri

Making of Georges Zaydan

Set photographer Yara Tayoun

Jana G. Younes is a young Lebanese filmmaker who has a keen enthusiasm for movement, starting from the very mundane, to the most complex figures of rituals and performing arts.

Jana graduated in filmmaking from the st Joseph University (IESAV) – Beirut after submitting her worldly recognized short dance film debut, Orenda.

Her infatuation with the duality of cinema and dance had started earlier on with her short documentary “Moving philosophy” where she applied Laban Movement Analysis’ theories for the human body on the body of the camera, studying the relationship between the two.

Inspired and driven by the early works of moving picture and interpretive dance, she orchestrated another film, And So Do I, starring acclaimed choreographer Jens Bjerregaard, Giulia Barbone and Shayene Kamel. A film about loss, love and the inability to forget.

In 2017, she founded alongside Bjerregaard, the Beirut Contemporary Ballet, a collective platform that's aim is to place Beirut on the international dance map, adaptive to both stage and screen.

The company's first project "Ghazal" that Younes directed, Bjerregaard choreographed and that starred two of the company's dancers Rebecca Dahrouj & Wafa Bouti, is set to be released in Summer 2019. The film features a reversed sequence of dance that was created for it to be flipped.

Jana as a photographer tends to create motion in the stillness of the photograph. Her subjects are to be moving, as if they are going somewhere, to say something. Her independent project “dancers revolute” that she created in response to the garbage crisis in Beirut, caught the public’s attention and the media’s recognition.

Today, her enthusiasm for movement, is taking different shapes, using different mediums and tackling more and more pathways that explore the physicality of the mind.