1. Retrospective MOHAMAD MALAS in Tunis
2. PANOPTIC in Cairo
3. MY NAME IS NOT ALI and ECCOMI … ECCOTI in Zurich
4. THE DREAM (al-Manam) at ALFILM
5. Larissa Sansour’s SCI-FI TRILOGY in Casablanca and Laval
6. SOLOMON’S STONE in Lyon and Annemasse
7. DRY HOT SUMMERS in Port-de-Buc
8. events and publication
9. VOD of the month: DRY HOT SUMMERS
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1. Retrospective MOHAMAD MALAS in Tunis

From April 17th till 24th 2018 the new Cinémathèque Tunisienne in Tunis, which opened doors in March 2018, honors Mohamad Malas with a retrospective of all his films in the presence of the director. More
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2. PANOPTIC in Cairo

Rana Eid’s essayist documentary Panoptic is invited to the Cairo Cinema Days at Zawya Cinema Cairo (Egypt) from April 23rd to 29th, 2018.

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
more
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3. MY NAME IS NOT ALI and ECCOMI … ECCOTI in Zurich

Raed Rafei’s Eccomi ... Eccoti and Viola Shafik’s My Name is Not Ali are presented on April 15th in Zurich (Switzerland) in the film program Under the Sky – Gender Perspectives in the Arab World. Both directors are available for Q&A after the screenings.

Eccomi … Eccoti
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?
documentary, Raed Rafei, Lebanon 2017, 68 min, color, Arabic/French/Italian/English with Engl. ST
more

My Name is Not Ali
His anti-racist film Ali, Fear Eats Soul (1973) gained German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder international acclaim. The protagonist, an Arab foreign worker, was played by Moroccan El Hedi Ben Salem M'barek Mohammed Mustafa, Fassbinder's lover at that time. While the film itself courageously deals with the racism of post-war German society, its makers reproduced the insensibility and invention of the Other, fantasizing their own 'Salem'. Collage-like, through interviews and archive material, My Name Is Not Ali uncovers the invention of El Hedi Ben Salem by the Fassbinder troupe, an image not revised by most of its members till today.
documentary, Viola Shafik, Egypt/Germany 2011, 93 min, German/Arabic/French with English ST
more
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4. THE DREAM (al-Manam) at ALFILM

Mohamad Malas’ seminal documentary The Dream is shown on April 16th in the program Special: 70 Years Nakba at ALFILM, the Arab Film Festival in Berlin (Germany).

Content
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.
documentary, Mohamad Malas, Syria 1987, 45 min, Arabic with Engl., German or French ST
more at ALFILM
more at mec film
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5. Larissa Sansour’s SCI-FI TRILOGY in Casablanca and Laval

The animated short-film trilogy by Larissa Sansour is shown in April on the 15th at the Festival du Premiers Romans in Laval (France) as well as at 24th edition of the International Festival of Video Art of Casablanca (Morocco) between the 24th and the 29th.

Content
Under the common themes of loss, belonging, heritage and national identity, the three films A Space Exodus (2008), Nation Estate (2012) and In the Future They Ate from the Finest Porcelain (2015) 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. more
if you cannot be in Casablanca or Laval, view online with realeyz
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6. SOLOMON’S STONE in Lyon and Annemasse

Ramzi Maqdisi’s black-comedy short is presented at the ciné-café L'Aquarium in Lyon (France) at the 6th of April as well as at Annemasse on the 21st of the month.

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.
short film, Ramzi Maqdisi, Palestine/Spain 2015, 25 min, color, digital, Arabic with Engl. or French ST
more
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7. DRY HOT SUMMERS in Port-de-Buc

Sherif Elbendary 30 minute Dry Hot Summers was showing in the framework of the Fête du courts métrages on March 17th, 2018 at the Cinema Le Méliès in Port-de-Bouc (France).

This is a film full of honesty and maturity: the honesty of an artist who has something to say apart from the usual themes and political messages; and the maturity of the filmmaker who is confident enough to do without the superfluous and unnecessary. It would be no exaggeration to say that Har Gar Sayfan [DRY HOT SUMMERS] is the best Egyptian short film of recent years. (goethe.de - Goethe-Institut e. V.)

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.
short film, Sherif Elbendary, Egypt/Germany 2015, 30 min, color, digital, Arabic with English, French or German ST
more
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8. events and publication

Panel: 14.4.2018 at 6.30 pm at Rote Frabrik Zürich (Switzerland)
Round Table on the realities of productions with Sawsan Darwaza (Ma'amal Jordan), Irit Neidhardt (mec film Germany) & Viola Shafik (Germany/Egypt) in the program of the Under the Same Sky film series.

Lecture: 17.4.2018 at 18:30h @ Wolf Kino Berlin (Germany)
On Solidarity and Dependency – The beginnings of PLO-GDR filmmaking in the 1970s in the program „For an Invisible People, Camera Would be Their Weapon” (Elias Sanbar) Lecture and Talk with Irit Neidhardt and Mohanad Yaqubi of the Special: 70 Years Nakba at ALFILM, the Arab Film Festival Berlin.

Moderation: Sun, 29.04.2018, 3 pm, Altes Pfandhaus, Cologne (Germany)
HEIM - Stage reading with Ursula Strauss and Jesse Albert. Discussion with Liwaa Yazji. Moderation: Irit Neidhardt. At the International Women's Film Festival Dortmund | Cologne in the Focus: ABOUT GERMANY. More

Text: A Country Allegendly Outside History. TV Review of François-Xavier Trégan's reportage Yemen – Chaos and Silence, by Irit Neidhardt (mec fim) on March 27th, 2018 at fr-online.de (German).
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9. VOD of the month: DRY HOT SUMMERS

Sherif Elbendary’s multi award winning short film can be viewed online with our partner’s realeyz.

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.
short film, Sherif Elbendary, Egypt/Germany 2015, 30 min, color, digital, Arabic with English, French or German ST
view online
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