Manar Moursi Website
You Can’t Get Blood From A Stone
Cairo, La Verdi, Mexico City, 2022
You Can't Get Blood from a Stone is an autofictional video essay drawn from a deeply personal archive of emails and exchanges between myself and an ex-lover, spanning nine years and beginning during Egypt's 2011 uprising. These emails, which form the voiceover, touch on a wide range of themes—relationships, family dynamics, personal growth, cultural and political reflections, and the process of coping with grief and loss. Through these intimate exchanges, the work reveals how the personal and political intersect, particularly within women's narratives, and confronts issues such as gender discrimination, social expectations, and gender-based violence. The visuals, primarily captured on my phone during those years, are layered with the voiceover to create a rich interplay of dissonance and consonance—moments of tension and harmony. The dissonance reflects the contradictions and emotional complexities in the relationship, while consonance brings together moments of connection and clarity. Together, the voiceover and visuals explore the fluid intersections of memory, identity, and socio-political reality, drawing connections between past and present, the individual and the collective, the intimate and the public.
Vimeo link