'Adnan being and time' is an expressionistic portrait of the great Etel Adnan (b. Beirut, 1925). Shot with the artist and poet over the last five years of her life, Adnan is working without ego, asking, what does it mean to be alive, to live through catastrophe, to experience time? Close to Adnan in her daily life, in her studio, in her works, and in the natural world essential to her aesthetic and philosophic understanding, the film's unfolding form extends and responds to Adnan's radical quality of attention.
70 min feature documentary, Fr/US 2025
Filmed in France with additional shooting in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and the United States.
Starring Etel Adnan
Produced, directed, filmed by Marie Valentine Regan
Edited by Marie Valentine Regan, Iva Radivojekić
Sound Design by Ernst Karel
About Etel Adnan
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Born and raised in Beirut in 1925 by an Ottoman Turk father and Greek mother, Adnan was educated in French schools in Lebanon. Adnan came to Paris to study philosophy and aesthetics at the Sorbonne, later doing advanced work in philosophy at Harvard University and UC Berkeley. In California, during the Algerian War for Independence, Adnan stopped writing in French and turned to English for her anti-war poetry. She also began to paint, creating abstract works in vivid color, ink drawings, tapestries, and accordion-folded paper books (leporellos).
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In 2012, at the age of 87, Adnan, already a renowned poet, surged to increased international art world attention when she was 'discovered' by Documenta 13. Serpentine Gallery Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist has called Adnan, 'one of the greatest artists of our time.'
Since then, Adnan's work has received major solo shows at the Guggenheim, Serpentine Galleries, Centrum Paul Klee, K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Institut du Monde Arabe, SFMOMA, Mass Moca, among many others. Her work is held in the collections of major museums across the world.
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Her writing (poetry, essays, novels and plays) is widely translated and taught, including her book-length poem, The Arab Apocalypse, and her long-form essay, Journey to Mount Tamalpais. Her anti-war novel, Sitt Marie Rose, won the France-Pays Arabes award. In 2014, Adnan received the Ordre de Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, France's highest cultural honor.
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Adnan lived for many years between California and France with artist, writer, and translator Simone Fattal who also published many of Adnan's works through her Post-Apollo Press.
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Famous in many circles, this film aims to bring Adnan to wider attention.
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About filmmaker Marie Valentine Regan
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​Regan is a California-born filmmaker who has been based in Paris for the last ten years.
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After studying humanities and international affairs (including Arab and African literature) at university, Regan got her start in film in San Francisco at Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope. She took classes in experimental film at the San Francisco Art Institute before moving to New York for her MFA in film at Columbia University.
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A MacDowell fellow, her film and video works (Traveler, Maracuja, Cowboy Song, Etel and the Moon) have screened at many international festivals including Zinebi Bilbao, Sâo Paolo, Woodstock, Palm Springs, etc. Her work has also been exhibited in museums such as the Pera Museum (Istanbul), K20 (Düsseldorf), Museum of Sound and Image (São Paolo), and KINDL-Center for Contemporary Art (Berlin).
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Regan taught film for many years in New York, including at Bard College where she taught with Kelly Reichart and Peter Hutton. In Paris, she has taught workshops on filmmaking, on genocide and cinema, and on filmmakers such as Claire Denis, Rithy Panh, and Agnès Varda.