Open Space #19: Mohammad Alfaraj

A boy who is half fish turns up in a village's dried-up spring, and a solitary baker takes him in. By the end of the three-minute film, the women's tears have brought the water back. Mohammad Alfaraj made it the way he makes everything here, alone: he writes the story, builds the characters from palm fronds, dates and stones, shoots them frame by frame and recites the tale himself.

Five stop-motion films play one after another, about 25 minutes of film, inside an installation of photographs of palm groves, desert and mountains, with sand, wood and water. You look up and a photograph on the ceiling shows the sky as if from the bottom of a well. The title comes from Al-Ahsa, the Saudi oasis where he lives, where a dragonfly circling at sunset means good news.

It is his first solo show in a French institution, and entry is included with a ticket for the Gustave Fayet exhibition. The Fondation is closed Tuesdays and open until 21:00 on Fridays.