Some men are playing soccer on a small field on the outskirts of a town. This rather casually filmed piece takes on its explicit meaning through the story a woman is telling along with it. She tells two stories, woven together, one in English and one in Arabic. Each story gives its own version of the woman's thoughts about what she is seeing, a woman who uses soccer as a metaphor for intimacy and the balance of power between men and women. In the English version it is clear that she has seen him/them play before. She is a woman, an outsider to the game; she watches, while he plays and is active. She would only be able to play with them if she were a man, but then she would have to master other skills as well, such as conquest and penetration, skills which are at odds with those she is already adept at and are a part of her very being as a woman. Her ruminations make clear that she does not want to play the role. She wants to be herself, and realizes that all this time she has sold herself short by seeing herself through his eyes. The Arabic text goes more deeply into the lack of freedom the narrator, being a woman, has. She feels stuck in her role, while he has the freedom to move about and although he asked his fellow players to help defend her honour, she makes clear that she does not truly trust them and suspects that they are only concerned with her chastity in so far as it affects their honour, something she experiences as two sides of the same coin. It makes her feel vulnerable and makes a plaything of her. But when at the end she decides not to look away when he looks at her, he comes steadily closer. When he is so close that she can no longer look away, she closes her eyes.
– Carla Hoekendijk
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Zeina Maasri ° 1973, Beirut (Lebanon)
Lives and works in Maastricht (Netherlands)
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