A tribute to my grandmother; a work that expresses her essence, with a narration of her encounter with Jamal Abdel Nasser during her studies in Egypt (~1960) and her true identity as a Lebanese.
Background/elements created on Illustrator and Photoshop. Rotoscope animations created on Adobe Animate. Assembled in After Effects. Spring 2020.
The background is inspired by the wallpaper on the balcony in our home in Saida, Lebanon, which is the place I always picture her in. Her favorite color was mauve purple. She loves Gardenia (Cape Jasmine) flowers. She insisted we feed the stray cats in our backyard before sitting to eat herself. And she used to help us search for the turtles in our garden when we were little.
If you're interested in the story behind the narration: an old photograph posted on Facebook of Abdel Nasser (Former President of Egypt) and a group of women captioned "Gaza women in the 1960s" was discovered by my aunt who noticed my grandmother at the center and attempted to correct the caption, mentioning that Naziha Elsayed (my grandmother) is from Saida, Lebanon and not from Gaza. The narration in the video is my grandmother addressing this post and affirming her identity ("Naziha Elsayed is Lebanese!") and telling a story of a time she was star-struck when she came across a crowd surrounding Abdel Nasser and tripped in front of him, which prompted him to push his guards aside and help her up while everyone stood behind him watching (a.k.a. main character moment).
My grandmother is in the bottom center, almost right below Jamal Abdel Nasser.
