1. PANOPTIC in Brussels
2. AND AN IMAGE WAS BORN in Haifa
3. ECCOMI … ECCOTI in Bern und Zürich
4. IN THE FUTUTE THEY ATE FROM THE FINEST PORCELAIN in NY, Haifa und bei LABOCINE
5. DIARIES OF A FLYING DOG at a Live Streaming Event of minaa.org
6. HAUNTED in Herdecke
7. Now on DVD: THE NIGHT by Mohamad Malas
8. VOD of the month: AND ON A DIFFERENT NOTE
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1. PANOPTIC in Brussels

Rana Eid feature documentary was showing at the Echoes of Ji.hlava in Brussels (Belgium) on March 7th, 2018 at the Café Cercle des Voyageur.

Panoptic is a visual work, but Eid’s ability to play these images against experimental soundscapes results in a harrowing, affecting and captivating debut. (4:3 - Four Three Film)

Content
Panoptic is a letter from a daughter to her deceased father in an attempt to reconcile with her country’s turbulent past.
Panoptic delves into Beirut’s underground to explore Lebanon’s schizophrenia: a nation that thrives for modernity while ironically ignoring the vices that obstruct achieving this modernity.
While the Lebanese population has chosen to turn a blind eye to these vices, Rana Eid, an ordinary citizen, explores the nation’s paradoxes through sound, iconic monuments and secret hidings.
documentary, Rana Eid, Lebanon 2017, 69 min, Arabic with Engl. or French ST
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2. AND AN IMAGE WAS BORN in Haifa

The new short film by Firas Khoury with animation by Amer Shomali is invited to the 3rd edition of Haifa Independent Film Festival at the end of March.

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.
Firas Khoury, Palestine 2017, 9 min, Arabic with English or French ST
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3. ECCOMI … ECCOTI in Bern and Zurich

Raed Rafei is presented in Switzerland at the Reitschule Bern 28 March 2018 and at 15 April 2018 in the Rote Fabrik Zurich in the framework of the program Under The Same Sky.

Content
Eccomi ... Eccoti unfolds as a virtual road trip navigating between Italy and Lebanon. Conditioned to live in a long-distance relationship with his partner because of strict European visa regulations, the director patches together the moments shared together in an attempt to create a possible day-to-day reality for their couple.
With a lyrical, ambient soundscape set atop a dreamy, atmospheric visual style that oscillates between still photography and moving images, the film explores what it means to be gay in contemporary Beirut and the aches of psychic pain that blocks one from reaching a sense of “complete-ness” with one’s self. Does such in-completeness have to do, in particular, with being gay? Or is it related to a grander malaise endemic to the human condition?
Raed Rafei, Lebanon 2017, 68 min, color, Arabic/French/Italian/English with Engl. ST
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4. IN THE FUTUTE THEY ATE FROM THE FINEST PORCELAIN in NY, Haifa and at LABOCINE

Also in its third year after its World Premiere at Berlinale’s Forum Expanded this short Sci-fi by Larissa Sansour and Soren Lind is travelling constantly. It is part of the Flaherty NYC Winter/Spring series programmed by Almudena Escobar López and Herb Shellenberger at the Anthology Film Archives (NYC) on March 13, 2018, was invited to the 3rd Haifa Independent Film Festival and is online with the LABOCINE March issue titled Avant Arabia.

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.
short Sci-fi, Larissa Sansour & Søren Lind, Palestine / UK / Denmark / Qatar 2015, 29 min, cinescope, color, Arabic with Engl. or French ST
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5. DIARIES OF A FLYING DOG at a Live Streaming Event of minaa.org

Bassem Fayad as personal as political feature documentary will be discussed with the director at a live streaming event of minaa.org via facebook on March 26th, 2018 at 6pm Jordanian local time. The language of the event is Arabic.

Content
A man and his tiny dog have something in common: obsessive compulsive anxiety disorder. Throughout their quest to heal, they dissect into pieces their surrounding - in its upbringing, fears, and constant inner conflict. A memory is recalled; a memory filled with fear, violence, war, love and a past almost depicting itself again in the present and in the future. The setting is a family’s house. A father, a mother, sons, daughters, and grandchildren living on a versant in Lebanon. The time is when beauty faded and ugliness and expiation prevailed. The man is the director, the dog is the mirror and the film is the instrument.
documentary, Lebanon/UAE, 2014, colour, digital, 75 min, Arabic with English subtitles
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6. HAUNTED in Herdecke

Liwaa Yazji’s feature documentary keeps showing in German cinemas, this month it plays in the city of Herne.

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 or 63 min, Arabic with ST in several languages available
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7. Now on DVD: THE NIGHT by Mohamad Malas

Mohamad Malas’ multi award winning classic The Night is now available on DVD with educational as well as with home-video rights.

Content
In the destroyed city of Quneitra is the grave of a resistance fighter for Palestine. His son, the director, tries to restore the dead man’s history by mixing echoes of his mother’s memory and his desire to give his father a more honorable death. Through the daily lives, dreams, fears and hopes of its citizens, Malas chronicles his hometown Quneitra in the Golan Heights between 1936, the year of the first revolts against the British and Zionists in Palestine until the year of the city’s destruction. He seeks to exorcise a feeling of shame and humiliation that long accompanied the image of his father and also his town, occupied by Israelis in 1967.
fiction, Mohamad Malas, Syria 1992, color, wide screen, 116 min, Arabic with English subtitles
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8. VOD of the month: AND ON A DIFFERENT NOTE

Mohammad Shawky Hassan’s experimental short-film is now available online for VOD with our partners realeyz. The film celebrated its world premiere at Berlinales Forum Expanded section and was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York for its permanent collection.
 
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.
short film, Egypt 2015, 24 mins, Color, Arabic/ English with English/Arabic Subtitles
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