Dialogue with the Unseen (2019)
The collaboration between Valerio Rocco Orlando and Saleh Bakri begins in the Summer of 2014, during Operation Protective Edge, when the two artists decide to write together a collective story to convey alternative narratives to those of war and occupation. Their intention is to show what remains of Palestine today, through a portrait of the new generation living in the area.
Walking across the desert, a revolutionary spirit (Saleh Bakri) questions the relationship between humanity and the Cosmos. Dialogue with the Unseen is a spiritual journey and a political pilgrimage to the Holy Land: a series of conversations between Palestinian men and women who share their experience of God, nature and society from a unique and unusual perspective.
Through the lunar silence of Maktesh Ramon; through Dj Eisa Khalifa’s intense gaze at Nazareth, as the sunset is descending from the Mount of the Precipice; through the voice of the poetess Asmaa Azaizeh on the remains of the old Haifa; Dialogue with the Unseen explores the sense of belonging and the cultural identity of a community that resists.