'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 form creates an experience of 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 Iva Radivojekić and Marie Valentine Regan
Sound Design by Ernst Karel
About Etel Adnan
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Born and raised in Beirut in 1925 by her father, an Ottoman officer from Damascas, and her Greek mother, Adnan was educated in French schools in Lebanon. She 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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Marie Valentine Regan is a California-born filmmaker who has lived in Paris for the past decade. She works at the border of documentary and experimental film.
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While an undergraduate student in international affairs at Georgetown University, Regan was introduced to Arab literature by Donald Herdeck of Three Continents Press. She began working in film at American Zoetrope in San Francisco, followed by studies in experimental film at the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA in Film from Columbia University.
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A MacDowell fellow, Regan’s films include ‘Cowboy Song’, a meditation on disability and the Western; ‘Maracuja’, a city symphony; ‘Etel and the Moon’, a cross-cultural reflection on the space age; and her newest film ‘Adnan being and time’ blends portrait and landscape film into an unfolding leporello-like form.
Her work has screened at international film festivals such as Cinéma du Réel, Zinebi Bilbao, São Paulo, the American Cinematheque, Woodstock, and Palm Springs, and in museums including K20 (Düsseldorf), KINDL (Berlin), and Pera Museum (Istanbul).
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Regan has taught film in New York at Columbia, Barnard, and Bard College, and in Paris, where she has led workshops on filmmaking, political cinema, and the works of directors Claire Denis, Rithy Panh, and Agnès Varda.