1. Profile: Larissa Sansour at Oberhausen Short Film Festival
2. HAUNTED – in German cinemas and in Athens
3. FREE RANGE in Amsterdam
4. SOLOMON’S STONE in Malmo
5. AL-MANAM (The Dream) by Mohamad Malas
6. DVD of the month
-----------------------------

1. Profile: Larissa Sansour at Oberhausen Short Film Festival

mec film is proud to announce the participation of Larissa Sansour at this year’s Profile section at Oberhausen International Short Film Festival. Apart from the major subject-related theme, the Festival has presented through the years also PROFILES of important filmmakers and institutions, some of whom have dealt with the short form for decades. On May 14th six of Sansour’s video works will be presented in the presence of the director, among them the sci-fi trilogy.

Larissa Sansour – Sci-fi Trilogy
In the Future They Ate from the Finest Porcelain (2016) completes Larissa Sansour’s science fiction trilogy along with A Space Exodus (2008) and Nation Estate (2012). Under the common themes of loss, belonging, heritage and national identity, the three films each explore different aspects of the political turmoil the Middle East. While A Space Exodus envisions the final uprootedness of the Palestinian experience and takes the current political predicament to its extra-terrestrial extreme by landing the first Palestinian on the moon, Nation Estate reveals a sinister account of an entire population restricted to a single skyscraper, with each Palestinian city confined to a single floor. In the trilogy’s final instalment, In the Future They Ate from the Finest Porcelain, a narrative resistance leader engages in archaeological warfare in a desperate attempt to secure the future of her people. Using the language of sci-fi and glossy production, Sansour’s trilogy presents a dystopian vision of a Middle East on the brink of the apocalypse.
Festivals and institutions please ask for screeners to our adress below
------------------------------

2. HAUNTED – in German cinemas and in Athens

Liwaa Yazji’s feature length documentary HAUNTED (Maskoon) is continues showing in German theatres, this month in Freiburg (in the presence of the director) and Karlsruhe as well as at the Athens Trii Artist’s hub. 

Content
“When the bombs fell, the first thing we did was run away. It was not until later that we realized we had not looked back. We were not allowed to say goodbye to our home, our memories, our photos and the life that was lived within them. We have become vacant like these spaces; our hastily packed belongings and the forgotten things haunt us.” An uncertain existence followed the escape and expulsion from Syria that tumbled into a physical and mental nowhere, a non-space between yesterday and tomorrow. “Haunted” tells of the loss of home and security, of the real and metaphorical meaning which a house, a home has in one’s life.
Liwaa Yazji, Syria 2014, 112 min, digital, Arabic with English, French, Spanish, Turkish or German subtitles
more
---------------------------

3. FREE RANGE in Amsterdam

On the occasion of the Freedom Day in The Netherlands on May 5th, the BoloBoost neighborhood center in Amsterdam is showing Bass Bréche’s Spaghetti Western Free Range.

Content
Based on actual events, Free Range is the story of a cow that crosses the border from Israel to Lebanon and meets with 16 year old Malakeh and her family. A  Lebanese Spaghetti-Western that talks about borders and power between people, religions, cows and UN interventions.
Lebanon/Germany 2014, 16 min, digital, cinescope, Arabic with English subtitles
more
-----------------------------------

4. SOLOMON’S STONE in Malmo

Ramzi Maqdisi‘s short film SOLOMON’S STONE shows at the Palestinian Film Week in Malmo/Sweden in May. The film was broadcast at BBC Arabic’s Cinema Badila at the end of April.

Content
Hussein, a Palestinian young man, receives a letter from the Israeli post office to appear in person to receive a package. He has to pay the sum of 20.000 $ US dollars in order to collect that package. Hussein’s curiosity to find out what the package contains drives him to sell everything he owns, despite the outright rejection of his mother, the matter that changes their lives afterwards.
The story is adapted by the novel Blue Light by Hussein Barghouty.
Palestine/Spain 2015, 25 min, color, Arabic with English or French subtitles
more
----------------------------

5. AL-MANAM (The Dream) by Mohamad Malas

Mohamad Malas’ seminal documentary al-Manam, The Dream, which was first released in 1987 is now available for cinemas, festivals and institutions in digital format with English, French or German subtitles as well as DVD with educational or home video rights. For screenings, please contact Irit Neidhardt at irit@mecfilm.de

Content
"Haj: Don’t you see the horses carrying soldiers in the sky?
Woman 1: They landed on earth and transformed to green and brown roosters; they started to fight each other.
Old man: they are fighting each other so as to liberate Palestine.
Woman 2: Like Cain and Abel."
Shot in 1980-81, the film is composed of interviews with different Palestinian refugees including children, women, old people, and militants from the refugee camps of Sabra, Shatila, Bourj el-Barajneh, Ain al-Hilweh and Rashidieh in Lebanon. In the interviews Mohamad Malas questions them about their dreams at night. The dreams always converge on Palestine: a woman recounts her dreams about winning the war; a fedai of bombardment and martyrdom; and one man tells of a dream where he meets and is ignored by Gulf emirs. During filming Malas lived in the camps and conducted interviews with more than 400 people. In 1982 the Sabra and Shatila massacres occurred, taking the lives of several people he interviewed, and he stopped working on the project. He returned to it in 1986 and edited the many hours of footage gathered into this 45 minute film, released in 1987.
Mohamad Malas, Syria 1987, documentary, 44 min, Arabic with subtitles
-----------------------------

6. DVD of the month

Solomon’s Stone by Ramzi Maqdisi

Content
Hussein, a Palestinian young man, receives a letter from the Israeli post office to appear in person to receive a package. He has to pay the sum of 20.000 $ US dollars in order to collect that package. Hussein’s curiosity to find out what the package contains drives him to sell everything he owns, despite the outright rejection of his mother, the matter that changes their lives afterwards.
The story is adapted from the novel Blue Light by Hussein Barghouty.

Ramzi Maqdisi, Palestine 2015, shortfilm, fiction, 25 min, Arabic
Subtitles: English
DVD PAL, region free

Subjects
Jerusalem, Myth, Oppression, Archaeology, Palestine

Award
Audience Award for the Best Short Film at the Mizna Arab Film Festival
go to shop-site