Memories and Light is a video journey undertaken by the artist Lisa Borgiani around various capitals in the Middle East: Jerusalem, Istanbul and Tehran. The idea is to film moments from daily life in specific locations which also have an historical meaning: the Mamilla mall in Jerusalem, the Galata bridge in Istanbul, the Azadi Tower and Jamshidieh park in Tehran. The aim is to use Light as a symbol of strength and hope. The project is traversed by a guiding theme of light, seen as a unique way of expressing the beauty of our environment while at the same time exploring the contradictions between elements within it.  It can also be interpreted as an expression of the desire to manifest the light which exists in ourselves as human beings, and as an expression of our own conflicts - individuals ones as well as social and ethnic ones. Length: 00:16:06 Year: 2013 GREEN LIGHT Mamilla mall, Jerusalem 2013 in collaboration with Claudio Pagliara, journalist, RAI middle-east correspondent  The video was recorded in different moments of the day at the Mamila Mall in Jerusalem, a bridge connecting the old city and the new one. Mamilla, which had to wait three decades before seeing the light, was designed by the same architect, Moshe Safdie, who built the Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem in 2005. The creation of a mall along the Green Line represents its definitive eradication. Its reference in the video, in the form of Green Light, is a journey through the idea that a line uncrossable from 1949 to 1967 no longer exists today in the minds of the people of all faiths who unconsciously move across it daily. People walk and intersect, without ever really meeting, their steps set to piano. The Green Light, initially an obstacle, slowly dissolves and disappears, leaving behind in its place a Light, symbol of union and hope.  YAKAMOZ Galata Bridge, Istanbul 2013 in collaboration with Marta Ottaviani, journalist and writer In 2007 a group of German researchers named the Turkish word “YAKAMOZ” (fluorescence, reflection) as the most beautiful word in the world. The video sequence was filmed on the Galata bridge in Istanbul in different moments of the day. The bridge is a bizarre hotchpotch of Europe and Asia, of west and east. And it is here that black and white fishing rods and ships, a metaphor for people and their histories, interlace their paths to the rhythm of the piano. The negative film creates an unusual scenario. At the end the scene slowly dissolves in the gleam of the moon reflected on the Bosphorus, when finally a bright Light takes its place. BLACK LIGHT Azadi tower | Jamshidieh park, Teheran 2013 in collaboration with Tatiana Boutourline, journalist and columnist for Il Foglio and IL From the Zorastrian legacy to the poetry of Rumi, Hafez and Saadi  there are few themes more strongly intertwined with Iranian culture and consciousness than light and darkness.The video sequence captures this duality splitting the screen in two: on the left side the Azadi Tower, on the right the Jamshidieh Park. Standing guard at the entrance of the Iranian capital the Azadi Tower has become one of the identity markers of Teheran.  Built in '71 as both a gateway to the future and a celebration of the past it has come to epitomize a metaphorical third eye on 40 years of hope and disentchantment from the Islamic Revolution of 1979 to the demonstrations of 2009.  In the video Azadi embodies Iran's public persona and  Jamshidieh its elusive private face, a split that represents a recurrent theme in much of  contemporary Iranian literature, art and cinema.  Around the marble tower life relentlessly keeps pulsing, Tehranis go about their daily business, there are occasional strong dashes of colour but the scene is filmed in black and white and the mood is set by a menacing dark light, on the other side of the screen the Jamshidieh stone garden is enveloped in a benevolent halo: children play, families pic nic, couples embrace under leafy trees. The sounds of laughter and trickling water fill the air, colours are vivid, life seems effortless.  In the last frame a boy leaps across the screen and a glowing Light conquers the Azadi Tower.