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Newsletter December 2018

1. ERASED,___ASCENT OF THE INVISIBLE awarded in Egypt and Tunisia, showing in Italy, Morocco and Peru
2. COUNTING TILES in Jordan
3. HAUNTED in Poland
4. THE NIGHT in Germany
5. publication
6. DVD of the month: HAUNTED
7. office hours December
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1. ERASED,___ASCENT OF THE INVISIBLE awarded in Egypt and Tunisia, showing in Italy, Morocco and Peru

Ghassan Halwani's Erased,___Ascent of the Invisible was awarded with the Bronze Tanit for the best long documentar at the Carthage Film Festival in Tunis and with the  Fathy Farag Prize for Best Artistic Contribution at International Film Critics’ Week at the 40th Cairo International Film Festival.
In December the film is presented at the Marrakech International Film Festival (Morocco) in the section Le 11e continent, at Transcinema IFF (Peru) and at the Laceno d'oro International Cinema Festival in Italy.

Content
Thirty-five years ago, I witnessed the kidnapping of a man I know.
He has disappeared since.
Ten years ago, I caught a glimpse of his face while walking in the street, but I wasn’t sure it was him.
Parts of his face were torn off, but his features had remained unchanged since the incident. Yet something was different, as if he wasn’t the same man.
essay-documentary, Lebanon 2018, color and black & white, 76 min, Arabic and English with English or French subtitles
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2. COUNTING TILES in Jordan

Cynthia Choucair’s timely feature documentary shows in December at the Karama Human Rights Film Festival in Amman (Jordan).

Content
In February 2016, a group of clowns travel to the Greek island of Lesvos on a mission to bring laughter to the waves of refugees crossing the sea to escape from war and enter Europe. Unwittingly, the clowns find themselves greeted with closed gates witnessing the effects of new policies enacted by the European Union towards the refugees.
Cynthia, the sister of one of the clowns, joins them on their journey which slowly becomes a reflection on the sisters’ own tale of displacement during the Lebanese civil war.
Moments of humor and joyful laughter bring the clowns back to their original mission, ironically playing with reality to a point where the lines between their clown personalities and their real selves are blurred.
documentary, Cynthia Choucair, Lebanon 2018, 87 min, Arabic with Engl. ST
more
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3. HAUNTED in Poland

Liwaa Yazji's feature documentary is shown at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (Poland) in the second week in December.

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 English ST
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4. THE NIGHT in Germany

Mohamad Malas' seminal feature fiction The Night (al-Leil) shows in the framework of program on Syrian film history at the Kinemathek Karlsruhe (Germany).

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 or French subtitles
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5. publication

Irit Neidhardt (mec fim): Attac and Insult. On the Dispute over the Palestine-Films of Lebanese Director Ziad Doueiri. In: inamo 95 | autumn 2018, pp. 32-34 (in German)
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6. DVD of the month: HAUNTED

Filmmaker Liwaa Yazji weaves conversations with friends, family and internal refugees from the Syrian civil war into an eloquent meditation on the physical, emotional and psychological toll of displacement. (tiff)

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, documentary, 112 min, Arabic
Subtitles: English, French, Spanish, German, Turkish, Romanian
DVD PAL, region free

Subjects
Syria, Refugees, Home, Civil War, Escape, Expulsion, Citizen, Portrait

Awards
FID Marseilles: Special Mention of the First Film Prize
International Festival of the Arab Film Gabès Tunis: Al-Waha Bronze Award

buy DVD | stream with realeyz or with MMedia
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7. office hours December

Due to the holidays at the end of the year the office is closed between December 22nd, 2018 and January 2nd, 2019.