Newsletter May 2015
1. DIARIES OF A FLYING DOG at Horizonte Competition at DOK.fest Munich
2. New in World Sales! THE MICE ROOM
3. FREE RANGE wins in Rabat
4. NATION ESTATE in Vienna and Cologne
5. HAUNTED in Ankara and Beirut
6. GLOW OF MEMORY. Retrospective of German-PLO Co-Productions
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1. DIARIES OF A FLYING DOG at Horizonte Competition at DOK.fest Munich
Content
Time has no beginning and no end, if it spins in a circle. Each point can be a start or a finish, or simply an abstract point. We can chose to begin and end, or we can chose to be.
A family of four generations in their house in the Lebanese mountains. A dog.
What does it mean to live in war that constantly changes features and never ends? What does it mean to care for a family in such a situation? Which values do you teach your children? What is society in a civil war? Or the nation? Can one heal before peace?
Using the example of his biography - from the first year of the civil war in 1975 till the early weeks of the Islamic State in summer 2014 - Bassem Fayad lovingly and courageously examines how life moves on while war rotates in and around it.
Bassem Fayad, 75 min, Libanon/UAE, Arabisch mit engl. UT
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2. New in World Sales! THE MICE ROOM
Content
Egypt / UAE 2013, 85 min, color, digital, Arabic with English subtitles
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3. FREE RANGE wins in Rabat
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.
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4. NATION ESTATE in Vienna and Cologne
Content
Nation Estate is a 9-minute sci-fi short offering a clinically dystopian, yet humorous approach to the deadlock in the Middle East.
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5. HAUNTED in Ankara and Beirut
Content
In her feature documentary Syrian director Liwaa Yazji explores what it means to set off in a war. She meets friends and people previously unknown to her at their homes. Domiciles where they live now or where they yet live. Spaces that turned into a sought-after commodity.
When does one leave? What does one take? What aspects of life irretrievably end with the departure? How long can one sit tight? How do people call their departure? Are they refugees? Do they move? Do they leave? Do they see themselves as displaced people? Do they just move on? What does home mean? Which rights do they lose? From which loss can they protect themselves? What can they control?
By means of her collected stories Yazji draws quasi en passant the trace of the endless refugee movements in the region of the last 70 years.
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6. GLOW OF MEMORY. Retrospective of German-PLO Co-Productions
From May 28th till June 13th Zeughauskino in the German Historical Museum in Berlin is showing the program GLOW OF MEMORY. Retrospective of German-PLO Co-Productions with works mutually produced by the PLO and GDR or the PLO and Federal German public bodies in the 1970s and 1980. All directors will be present to introduce and discuss their work. The program s curated by Irit Neidhardt, artistic consultant: Kais al Zubaidi. The catalogue is available online in German and Arabic here (pdf).
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