Beirut-born, Paris-based artist Christian Boustani has gained international recognition both for his video installations and for his innovative work in computer animation. For the past decade Boustani has been engaged in a series of highly cinematic reworkings of painting—work that has culminated in a trilogy of animated films entitled Cités Antérieures (Cities of the Past). In the first installment of the series he mixes details of cityscapes from historical paintings with contemporary imagery to create a dreamlike portrait of the Italian city of Siena. In his striking Cités Antérieures—Brugge (on the ancient Belgian town of Bruges), Boustani uses fiction for the first time and vividly creates a potent evocation of the lived experience of the Renaissance. He is currently working on Cités Antérieures—Toledo, the final work in the series.