IN TRANSIT BETWEEN IDENTITIES: “PITTSBURGH IS A FEELING”

by Adam Arthur

On a sleepy side street in Pittsburgh’s unassuming Point Breeze neighborhood, there exists a small temple to mid-twentieth-century art and societal discourse. The name of this magical land beyond time? Bottom Feeder Books. Featuring The Andy Warhol Diaries in library binding and battered, paperback volumes of criticism by Joan Didion, Bottom Feeder books is nothing if not a pleasant time-warp to the past of American art and cultural criticism, a few generations removed from the lives of most of its Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha customers. It was against this backdrop that Lily Ekimian Ragheb Ahmed T. Ragheb presented their short film collection, Pittsburgh is a Feeling.

Under the banner of Studio Ragheb, with its logo written in ornate Arabic calligraphy, all five films dealt with the experience of living between identities and cultures. These films ask a tough question: does having a foot in two cultures make one culturally homeless rather than dually grounded? And if so, does this mean a person with a multicultural identity really doesn’t have a place in either culture? And does this mean that culturally important things happen only to other people?

This theme was front-and-center of the first film, “She Sings.” The film focuses on a young woman named Aziza, having a dream in Arabic in which she rapidly shifts between imagining footage of a bridge in the Greater Pittsburgh Area, surrounded by green Appalachian Mountains, and a scenic land of palm trees and ancient castles in the Middle East. At the end of the film, after announcing that she is singing the distinctly American genre of Country, her place as “the singer” is taken by an American man of less ambiguous cultural and ethnic identity.

The second film, “Capitol Limited”, continues this theme, portraying characters in transit on their way to a wedding in Washington, D.C. The narration is presented in a distorted style reminiscent of the dialogue from the metaphysical realm of the Black Lodge in David Lynch’s and Mark Frost’s surreal Twin Peaks television series.

This touch adds to a sense of liminality and “placelessness.” Adding to this theme, the protagonists comment on a mass shooting that occurs near them, but in which they are not involved as victims or bystanders. The message is clear, and paradoxically tragic given the heavy subject matter: important things, whether they are good or bad, happen to other people when you are in transit and between spaces.

A more poignant exploration of this theme emerges in the following film, “Tales of the Marvelous and News of the Strange.” Using stark, black-and-white still photography, the film portrays an aspiring Arab-American actor living in Pittsburgh, dreaming in color of his ancestral land of Egypt. Footage of familiar Pittsburgh locales like Gooski’s Bar and Allegheny Cemetery features as a bleak and desolate contrast. In some of the film’s most pointed commentary, the protagonist wonders if his Arab-American name keeps him from landing big roles.

In viewing this film, I immediately drew parallels to my recent experiences conversing with a scholar of Political Science, a Czech in his own country, who struggled to publish scholarly work because of his Slavic, non-Anglo name.

The film thus touched on a perennial problem: that Anglo-American culture is the assumed “global” norm, and that those outside of it exist on the margins and must struggle to be taken seriously in their professions, even in countries where they are the ethno-linguistic majority.

It is no wonder, then, that the Arab-American protagonist of “Tales of the Marvelous and News of the Strange” psychologically reconstructs Egypt as a world in which he is surrounded by the vibrancy of a shared heritage rather than left behind by an assumed default that excludes him.

This theme features prominently in the next film, “Visitor”, in which the narrator recounts a move from Pittsburgh to Buffalo. These are two places that her mother insists are more or less the same from the perspective of an Arab-American immigrant. What is most notable about this film, however, is that it uses lighting and motion in a punctuated way, emphasizing stillness and silence in its shots of Pittsburgh’s Bloomfield neighborhood.

The last film, “Florence is for Lovers”, is in Italian with English subtitles, again implicitly set on a train, suggesting an identity in motion. This film also builds on the notion of traveling “between” lands, spaces, and identities. The narrator speaks to an anonymous listener it is implied is a man making an unwanted pass at her, and during the conversation she alludes to a serial killer in the Italian countryside who targeted couples: again, implying that important things, whether they are good or bad, happen to other people, and that someone with a multicultural identity is stuck as a perpetual observer to such events rather than a participant.

At the end of the screening, Lily Ekimian Ragheb and Ahmed T. Ragheb addressed these themes, discussing the feeling of having “linguistic insecurity” over a hyphenated-American  heritage, and the use of trains as imagery to suggest a constant state of flux. Thus, against the twentieth-century-coded backdrop of Bottom Feeder Books, Lily Ekimian Ragheb and Ahmed T. Ragheb brought to the forefront a twenty-first century discussion about a multigenerational problem: that, while there is a distinct privilege to having the knowledge imbued by multiple identities and heritages, there also comes with that multicultural identity a deep fear of constantly watching the world move on from the window of a train, cursed to observe rather than to engage.

Upcoming further screenings from Studio Ragheb can be found on their website.

Adam Arthur holds a graduate degree from Florida State University. He is the author of two poetry collections, Levers of Power and Sound and Substance.  A transplant to Pittsburgh, he has lived in the area for three years and takes inspiration from his surroundings in his written work.