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director
Mohamad Malas

المخرج محمد ملص


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Biography

Mohamad Malas was born in 1945 in Quneitra on the Golan Heights. He is a prominent Syrian filmmaker whose films garnered him international recognition. Malas is among the first auteur filmmakers in Syrian cinema.

Malas worked as a school teacher between 1965 and 1968 before moving to Moscow to study filmmaking at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography (VGIK). During his time at VGIK he directed several short films. After his return to Syria Malas started working at the Syrian Television. There he produced several short films including Quneitra 74, in 1974 and al-Zhakira (The Memory) in 1975.
Along with Omar Amiralay he co-founded the Damascus Cinema Club.

Between 1980 and 1981 Malas shot the documentary, al-Manam (The Dream), about the Palestinians living in the refugee camps in Lebanon during the civil war.

He directed his first feature film, Ahlam al-Madina (Dreams of the City), in 1983. The autobiographical coming-of-age film received the first prize both at the Valencia and the Carthage Film Festivals.
In 1995 Malas, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of cinema, shot with Omar Amiralay Nur wa Zilal a documentary film about Nazih Shahbandar whom he described as Syria's first filmmaker. The film was banned by Syrian authorities and could only be screened one time in 1993 at the American Cultural Center in Damascus.

Malas's second feature film, al-Lail (The Night), was realized in 1992. The autobiographical film is set in Quneitra in the years between 1936 and the Arab–Israeli War of 1948. It forms, along with Ahlam al-Madina, the first and second parts of a yet unfinished trilogy. Both films were shown at Berlinale’s Forum section. Al-Lail received international recognition and won first prize at the 1992 Carthage Film Festival. However, the film was banned in Syria until 1996. In 2013 Ahlam al-Medina was among the top 10 of the “100 Greatest Arab Films List”, which film professionals from the Arab World and associates of Dubai International Film Festival voted for.

Another collaboration between Malas and Omar Amiralay is the 1996 documentary film Moudaress about the Syrian pioneer painter Fateh Moudarres.
Bab al-Makam (Passion), released in 2005, was Malas's third feature film, it won the Special Jury Award at the Marrakech International Film Festival. Sullam Ila Dimashq (Ladder to Damascus), released in 2013, premiered at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival and was screened in more than 50 festivals since.

Mohamad Malas’ 1991 book The Dream. A Diary of the Film was translated into English and published by the American University of Cairo Press in 2016. In 2018 the monograph The Cinema of Muhammad Malas. Visions of a Syrian Auteur by Samirah Alkassim and Nezar Andary was published at Palgrave MacMillan.

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About Mohamad Malas' work

The cinema of Mohamed Malas: Recreating a nation's history - by Yasmine Zohdi
for ahramonline on 12 May 2014

In the final sequence of Mohamed Malas’ debut feature Dreams of the City – which he completed in 1984 – groups of men and women in Damascus celebrate the 1958 unity between Egypt and Syria. In elation, they dance and ululate, while pictures of Gamal Abdel-Nasser cover the streets.
Today, because of difficulties in obtaining an entry visa, Malas barely made it to Cairo for the retrospective of his films hosted by art house cinema initiative Zawya in Cinema Odeon between 8 and 11 May.
Malas, however, does not seem overly upset about the obstacles he encountered. The way he sees it, the restrictions imposed on Syrians trying to enter Egypt are only temporary. continue reading

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