1. New! AND AN IMAGE WAS BORN by Firas Khoury
2. CHRONIC in Amsterdam
3. AND ON A DIFFERENT NOTE in Beirut
4. NATION ESTATE in Strasbourg
5. New mec films at realeyz
6. Relaunch iritneidhardt.de
7. Newsletter October and November 2017
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1. New! AND AN IMAGE WAS BORN by Firas Khoury

We are happy to welcome Firas Khoury’s new short film in the mec film catalogue. In November the short was shown at renowned Film Days of Carthage in Tunis.

Content
Palestinian two years old Razi loves to hear the story of The Monster. The story is an allegory of the Palestinian problem but he is too young to comprehend the political association, he just wants to imagine and live through its details over and over again. The narrator has his own film in his head.
short film, Firas Khoury, Palestine 2017, 9 min,  Arabic with English or French ST
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2. CHRONIC in Amsterdam

Mohamad Sabbah’s feature fiction CHRONIC showed at the International Queer & Migrant Film Festival in Amsterdam earlier this month. The director was present for Q&A after the screening.

Content
Omar, a Lebanese photographer, has a special experience with death and is trying to live his mourning through a new project. Following a casting, he receives three guests, one after the other.  One day, one house, bodies express stories of sex, love and trauma in the city of Beirut.
 Walid, a young dancer, avoids falling in love and getting attached. Omar seems to have a complex relation with dancers. He seeks a kind of revenge from Walid.
May, a Lebanese woman, lost her Syrian lover Kinan who died while escaping by boat across the sea to Europe. She tries to confront and comfort Omar. She tries to embrace him, in vain.
Antoine, a French-Lebanese man, used to live in Paris. He was on a visit to Beirut when he survived an explosion, what made him move back to Lebanon. He has a special lifestyle, violence plays a major role in his life. Omar and Antoine engage in a harmful game.
Visitor after visitor, chapter after chapter, Omar's pain is revealed and he is provoking danger. 
feature fiction, Mohamed Sabbah, Lebanon/Germany 2017, 89min, Arabic with Engl. or French ST
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3. AND ON A DIFFERENT NOTE in Beirut

In the framework of the AFAC Film Nights in Beirut Mohamad Shawky Hassan’s experimental short film AND ON A DIFFERENT NOTE was presented in the Sursock Museum in Beirut in early December.

Content
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.
short film, Egypt 2015, 24 mins, Color, Arabic/ English with English/Arabic Subtitles
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4. NATION ESTATE in Strasbourg

Since 2012 Larissa Sansour’s short Sci-fi NATION ESTATE is constantly touring festivals and other events. In November/December the film showed at the gallery program of the Mediterranean Festival in Strasbourg (France).

Content
Nation Estate is a 9-minute sci-fi short offering a clinically dystopian, yet humorous approach to the deadlock in the Middle East.
The film explores a vertical solution to Palestinian statehood: One colossal skyscraper housing the entire Palestinian population - now finally living the high life.
short Sci-fi, Larissa Sansour, Palestine/Denmark 2012, 9 min, digital, no dialogue
more
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5. New mec films at realeyz

We are happy that the mec film channel at our VOD partner realeyz is taking a new shape. Newsly added to the online viewing platform:  DRY HOT SUMMERS by Sherif Elbendary, DIARIES OF A FLYING DOG by Bassem Fayad, the SCI-FI TRILOGY by Larissa Sansour, SOLOMON’S STONE by Ramzi Maqdisi and FREE RANGE by Bass Bréche. Pass by and watch here. 
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6. Relaunch iritneidhardt.de

The website iritneidhardt.de is online since 2001. The technology was a bit outdated and at a point the homepage only showed fatal error when trying to visit it. Now it is out again. On the pages you find information about the work of free-lance author, curator and speaker Irit Neidhardt (mec film) in the field of cinema and the Arab World.
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7. Newsletter October and November 2017

Also the mec film homepage is completely renewed. Due to the construction works the newsletter disappeared for a while. If you want to know what happened in October and November, you can read the news here.
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