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Newsletter November/December 2016

1. AND ON A DIFFERENT NOTE at MoMA in New York
2. HAUNTED – German theatrical release and festivals
3. DRY HOT SUMMERS honored in Egypt, France and USA, further festivals
4. The Sci-Fi Trilogy by Larissa Sansour
5. IN THE FUTURE THY ATE FROM THE FINEST PORCELAIN travelling
6. SOLOMON’S STONE in Alexandria, Lille and Sardinia
7. FREE RANGE in Zurich
8. mec film documentaries at mina.org
9. Events and publication
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1. AND ON A DIFFERENT NOTE at MoMA in New York

Mohammad Shawky Hassan’s AND ON A DIFFERENT NOTE shows at Inbox at the Museum of Modern Art in New York till December 11th, 2016. Inbox exhibitions show MoMA’s new acquisitions.

Content
Today in this house nothing happens, nor does it in the homes of others. Time and place stand on parallel lines, refuting the coordinates of existence. The chronology of events is obscured, subversive noise is obliterated, elucidation impossible and language futile. All that remains is a soundscape perpetually occupied by self-proclaimed patriots, and scattered spaces carved by the rhythm of everyday life, all conspiring to maintain the status quo while hiding the humming background noise of the world.
And on a Different Note is a navigation of an attempt to carve out a personal space amid an inescapable sonic shield created primarily by prime time political talk shows with their indistinguishable, absurd and at times undecipherable rhetoric/ noises. Equally repulsive and addictive, these noises travel across geographies gradually constituting an integral part of a self-created map of exile.
Egypt 2015, 24 min, color, Arabic/ English with English/Arabic Subtitles
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2. HAUNTED – German theatrical release and festivals

Liwaa Yazji’s feature length documentary HAUNTED (Maskoon) was theatrically released in German cinemas on November 24th, 2016. Internationally the film showed in November and December in Belgrade, Bologna, Chambéry and Hamburg.

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
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3. DRY HOT SUMMERS honored in Egypt, France and USA, further festivals

Sherif Elbendary’s DRY HOT SUMMERS won the award for the Best Short Film at the 20th Egyptian National Film Festival as well as the Best Narrative Short Film Award at the Arab Film Festival in San Francisco. At the Mediterranean Film Festival in Montpellier the film was honored with a Special Mention.
In November and December the film is showing in Aix-en-Provence, Doha and Dreseden.

Content
Two lonely people at opposite chapters of life accidentally meet on a busy summer day in a Cairo taxi. Frail old Shawky and bubbly young Doaa are both caught up in their busy routines as their race through the city evolves into a journey of self-discovery that reconnects them to life.
Egypt/Germany 2015, 30 min, digital, color, Arabic with English or French subtitles
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4. The Sci-Fi Trilogy by Larissa Sansour

Larissa Sansour’s Sci-fi short film trilogy is showing in November at NURT Festival in the Polish city of Kielce and in December in Toulouse in France. The internet platform Ibraaz – Contemporary Art and Culture in North Africa and the Middle East will present the trilogy over the holidays in December at its Channel. Each part will show for one week for free.

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 (2009) 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.
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5. IN THE FUTURE THY ATE FROM THE FINEST PORCELAIN travelling

Larissa Sansour’s new Sci-fi IN THE FUTUTRE THEY ATE FROM THE FINEST PORCELAIN (co-director: Soren Lind) shows in November and December in Aix-en-Provence, Kassel and Zurich.

Content
In the Future They Ate From the Finest Porcelain resides in the cross-section between sci-fi, archaeology and politics. Combining live motion and CGI, the film explores the role of myth for history, fact and national identity.
A narrative resistance group makes underground deposits of elaborate porcelain – suggested to belong to an entirely fictional civilization. Their aim is to influence history and support future claims to their vanishing lands.
Palestine/Denmark/UK/Qatar 2015, 29 min, digital, cinescope, Arabic with English subtitles
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6. SOLOMON’S STONE in Alexandria, Lille and Sardinia

Ramzi Maqdisi‘s short film SOLOMON’S STONE continues travelling the world with stops in Alexandria at the Mediterranean Film Festival, in Lille at the Palestine Film Festival as well as at Immagini Film Festival on Sardinia.

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
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7. FREE RANGE in Zurich

Bass Bréche’s Lebanese Spaghetti Western FREE RANGE is currently showing at the Arab Film Festival in Zurich, Switzerland.

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
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8. mec film documentaries at mina.org

VOD platform mina.org is presenting the documentary films from the mec film catalogue in its “collections” section. A number of them is high lightened this fall under the headline “Documentary films rising questions on home loss.
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9. Events and publication

“Documenting Syria” was the title of an evening at Film Museum Potsdam in early November. The program showed two of the films renown filmmakers Winfried and Barabara Junge (The Children from Golzow) made in Syria in 1970 - “… and Father stayed at War” as well as “In Syria for Construction”. The screening was followed by a conversation with Winfried Junge and Irit Neidhardt (mec film) about the meaning of those films today.

In the framework of the exhibition “Uncertain States. Artistic Strategies at States of Emergency” at the German Academy of Arts in Berlin Mehdi Fleifel’s A WORLD NOT OURS was presented in the presence of the director. The Artist Talk was moderated by Irit Neidhardt. A WORLD NOT OURS is in the German theatrical catalogue of mec film.

“Working Women nothing New” is the title under which Frankfurter Rundschau published Irit Neidhardt’s review of the German TV production “The Secret Revolution – Women in Saudi Arabia”. read review in German
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