AlShare | الشارع
2010 — OngoingFounded in Syria in 2010, AlShare was where Matar first worked across forms rather than inside a single medium: reporting, documentary film, public-space projects, training and collaborative media work.
Founded in Syria in 2010, AlShare works across documentary film, journalism, cultural projects, training and collaborative media production.
- Role
- Founder & Director
- Period
- 2010 —
The project is developed collaboratively. Consult each original work for full team credits.
Selected work records
Materials and outputs
Smuggling 23 Minutes of a Revolution
Directed by Amer Matar, filmed in Hama in 2011.
Azadi
Directed by Amer Matar in north-east Syria in 2011.
White Charcoal
Directed by Amer Matar; built from an interview with Syrian artist Youssef Abdelke.
Banner
Produced by AlShare; a film about Kafranbel and its iconic protest banners.
Our Streets Celebrate Freedom
Produced by AlShare; Bassel Shehadeh’s unfinished record of the uprising.
Nightmare Happened Here
A short film by Mezar, Amer and Mohammad Nour Matar after a Scud missile struck Raqqa in April 2013.
Question and approach
AlShare began by documenting the social effects of drought and internal displacement before the uprising. From 2011 it produced reports and documentary films on protests, local organising, repression and daily life, while working with Arab and international media.
It then moved from documentation to creating public cultural space: the Syrian Street Festival, the Syria Mobile Film Festival, filmmaking training and production support. Beginning in 2017, the Raqqa Between Two Bridges programme worked with 24 civil-society organisations in Raqqa and Deir Ezzor and produced 407 short videos about their work.
Systematic documentation of prisons and detention sites began in 2017. As the archive grew, this work later developed into the specialised Prisons Museum project.
Role in the work
Matar founded AlShare as a working space rather than around one medium. His role moved between reporting, documentary production, public cultural work and training; many of the collaborative methods he later used in other projects were tested there in less formal forms.