Incarceration

For 5 months, Clarke held workshops with young women, ages 18-23 years old, who were incarcerated at the Ventura Youth Correctional Facility in Camarillo, California. As part of the weekly classes, the wards painted their faces and made digital self portraits. In the corner of the room was a video camera mounted on a tripod with a remote control. Each week the women sat alone in front of the camera and made a Diary tape. Inside Out includes several of the diaries.

One of Zaatari’s earliest experiments in documentary video, All Is Well on the Border emerged from the filmmaker’s desire to understand Israel’s occupation of Southern Lebanon following the 1982 Lebanon War. The video presents a series of testimonies by Lebanese citizens who were detained during the occupation, each presenting an image of resistance that falls outside the dominant narrative of liberation and solidarity promoted by the Lebanese left.