Future Paths: A special episode in commemoration of Hassan Abbas: The Trail is Laid by his Footsteps

Today marks the first anniversary of the passing of our friend, researcher and trainer Hassan Abbas, who may have departed this world, but whose ideas, projects, and achievements are still and abundant source of critique and learning. We are commemorating his memory by releasing a lengthy interview recorded with Abbas back in the fall of 2020. Our hope was to share the interview earlier and to discuss with him the ideas and thoughts he mentioned therein, as we had done over the past ten years.

In the interview, Abbas discusses some of his major achievements in his forty years of intellectual work. He also shares with us his views on cinema clubs and the history of their establishment in Syria and Lebanon. We also reflect with him on the forms of resistance and the refusal of defeat that manifested in the Arab region as an attempt to visualize the future and move towards it despite the challenges of the present.

The interview is released as part of the Future Paths series, which includes 11 interviews with several cultural and artistic actors in Syria over the past decades. The series offers a broad and multi-faceted approach to tackle the questions and transformations that have accompanied Syrian artistic production and its linkages to Arab and global issues. It also seeks to answer the main questions for the upcoming period, especially those related to the cultural and artistic production process in Syria.

To watch the full interview please click here.