Newsletter May 2021
1. ERASED,___ASCENT OF THE INVISIBLE wins Grand Prize in Taiwan
2. AS ABOVE, SO BELOW in Brazil
3. IN VITRO in Brazil, England, France, Serbia and the USA
4. Larissa Sansour's Sci-Fi Trilogy in Brazil and in the USA
5. COUNTING TILES in Taiwan
6. BIRDS OF SEPTEMBER in Northern-Ireland
7. Panel Discussion
8. DVD of the month - COUNTING TILES
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1. ERASED,___ASCENT OF THE INVISIBLE wins Grand Prize in Taiwan
Ghassan Halwani wins the Grand Prize of the International Competition of the Taiwan International Documentary Festival. From the Jury Statement: “The film raised important questions that are not only relevant to the local context of Lebanon, but also extremely global as many countries have also been suffering from historical amnesia.”
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 subtitles
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2. AS ABOVE, SO BELOW in Brazil
Sarah Francis experimental documentary show at the 2nd Arab Women's Film Festival in Brazil in mid-May.
Content
A group of people roams in a bare landscape around a set of swings as their only settlement, as if mapping, exploring, reorganizing the open territory they are in. As they move, changes in soundscapes make them virtually cross geographies. In the sky, a moon-like satellite roves above their heads, following them like an omen. The moon, once symbolizing cyclical times, myths and new beginnings, is now the satellite waiting to be conquered and colonized. Reality and fantasy intertwine in an existential quest. Is a new beginning really possible? As below, so above.
documentary, Sarah Francis, Lebanon 2020, 70 min, b&w and color, Arabic with English subtitles
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3. IN VITRO in Brazil, England, France, Serbia and the USA
The science fiction short film by Larissa Sansour and Soren Lind can be seen in May at the Arab Women Film Festival in Brazil, the cooltXchange program in England and Serbia, at the Ciné Palestine Film Festival in France as well as at the Mizna Arab Film Festival in the USA.
Content
In Vitro is set in the aftermath of an eco-disaster. An abandoned nuclear reactor under the biblical town of Bethlehem has been converted into an enormous orchard. Using heirloom seeds collected in the final days before the apocalypse, a group of scientists are preparing to replant the soil above.
In the hospital wing of the underground compound, the orchard’s ailing founder, 70-year-old Dunia is lying in her deathbed, as 30-year-old Alia comes to visit her. Alia is born underground as part of a comprehensive cloning program and has never seen the town she’s destined to rebuild.
short Sci-fi, Larissa Sansour & Soren Lind, Palestine/Denmark/UK 2019, 28 min, digital, picture ratio 1:2.66, Arabic with English subtitles
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4. Larissa Sansour's Sci-Fi Trilogy in Brazil and in the USA
Larissa Sansour's Sci-Fi Trilogy shows in mid-May at the 2nd Arab Women's Film Festival in Brazil as well as at the Mizna Arab Film Festival (USA).
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.
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5. COUNTING TILES in Taiwan
Cynthia Choucair's documentary about the situation in Lesbos and her own childhood memories of displacement showed in May in the Asian Vision Competition of the Taiwan International Documentary Festival.
Content
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.
documentary, Cynthia Choucair, Lebanon 2018, 87 min, Arabic with Engl. ST
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6. BIRDS OF SEPTEMBER in Northern-Ireland
Sarah Francis unusual portrait of Beirut is part of a Lebanese online film program at Void in Northern Ireland in May.
Each element is only partially graspable – it’s possible to focus on the words, the face or the city behind them, but usually never all at once. At times it feels like tapping into Beirut’s unconscious, the streets and sky merging with anxieties about work, relationships and religion. (Movie Morlocks)
Content
A glassed van roams the streets of Beirut, home to a camera that explores the city behind the glass. Along the way, several people are invited to share a personal moment in this moving confessional. Each one comes as a face, a body, a posture, a voice, an attitude, an emotion, a point of view, a memory. Their confessions are true, blunt, and intimate. However, soon enough, the van empties again, and roams Beirut; restlessly looking for something, for someone.
documentary, Sarah Francis, Lebanon/Qatar 2013, 99 min, digital, Arabic with English or French subtitles
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7. Panel Discussion
Orientalizing the Holy Land or How did the Gaze of Western Christian Travelers contribute to shaping today’s image of Palestine in Europe? (in German)
22nd May 2021 at 2pm (German time) at Forum Factory Berlin or online
In the framework of the Zait wa Zaatar Festival Berlin
Christian European men travelled to the Middle East in search of the land as described in the book holy to them. Some prominent travellers, most notably Gustaf Dalman, built up whole archives, now mostly housed by theological faculties in universities, amongst them Berlin and Greifswald. What were their conceptions at the time, the beginning of photography done by travellers (app 1900-1913), how did the images of Arab peoples, indigenous Palestinians contribute to the way they are still portrayed today? And how does this shape the way Europeans see, judge and act on the disputed land that once was known as Palestine?
Panelists: Dr. Bashar Shammout, Irit Neidhart (mec film)
Moderator: Cora Jostings
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8. DVD of the month - COUNTING TILES
Content
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.
In October 2015 my sister Sabine went to Lesvos, as part of a group of clowns with the organization Clowns Without Borders to perform for refugees who were making the dangerous journey across the sea to Europe. Media organizations from all over the world were covering the migration and I was overwhelmed by the coverage. I needed to see it first hand to understand.
In February 2016 I followed my sister when she returned to Lesvos. After I arrived, all of my plans changed. We were denied access to all of the refugee camps.
We ended up being in the middle of nowhere, unsure of what we were even waiting for. I felt as if I was a refugee myself, my anxieties about war came back and I wanted to return home. But going back home meant returning to the memories of war and of our family being displaced from one place to another.
All of these memories swirled in my head while I was filming the clowns waiting, and wondering…
When I was two years-old, my parents fled the civil war in Lebanon and went to Athens. Today, 40 years later, history is repeating itself, with different people and myself in that same place looking at it from a different perspective. (Cynthia Choucair)
DVD-Info
documentary, Cynthia Choucair, Lebanon 2018, 87 min, Arabic
Subtitles: English
Synopsis, credits, director's biography
PAL, no regional code
Subjects
Memory, refugees, Mediterranean, Moria, EU Borders
Awards
UNHCR AWARD Best Feature Film on Refugee Theme - CineMigrante
Special Mention - Aswan Women's Film Festival
Institutional rights
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