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Newsletter April 2022

1. ERASED,___ASCENT OF THE INVISIBLE in Belgium and Germany
2. DREAMS OF THE CITY in the USA
3. AS ABOVE, SO BELOW in the USA
4. MY NAME IS NOT ALI at Shasha Movies
5. IN VITRO in Canada
6. LIKE TWENTY IMPOSSIBLES in the USA
8. WAJIB in Offenbach
9. A WORLD NOT OURS in Berlin
10. DVD/ of the month - BIRDS OF SEPTEMBER
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1. ERASED,___ASCENT OF THE INVISIBLE in Belgium and Germany

Ghassan Halwani feature documentary is presented in April at the Spotlight of ALFILM - Arab Film Festival Berlin and in the Cinema Galeries in Brussels (Belgium).

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. DREAMS OF THE CITY in the USA

Mohamad Malas' 1984 feature fiction is a classic of Arab cinema. It is invited to this April's Film Festival Collab online in the USA.

Content
When his father dies, Dib, his younger brother and their mother (Yasmine Khlat) move away from their hometown Quneitra to Damascus. The mother’s despotic father reluctantly takes them in and tries to force the mother to remarry. Overwhelmed by the magic of the city, Dib wants to discover everything and is full of dreams. His daily life is shaped by insults and punishments however. Dib grows up against a backdrop of the political upheavals of the 1950s (the end of the military dictatorship in Syria and the nationalization of the Suez Canal, Nasser’s taking of power in Cairo, Egyptian and Syrian unification in 1958) and loses his childish illusions in the face of such violence and brutality. The dreams of the city prove to be a nightmare. Mohammad Malas’ partly autobiographical debut film marked the transition to auteur cinema in Syria.
fiction, Mohamad Malas, Syria 1984, 130 min, color, Arabic with Engl. or French ST
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3. AS ABOVE, SO BELOW in the USA

Sarah Francis is invited in April to the Film Festival Collab online in the USA.

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
more
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4. MY NAME IS NOT ALI at Shasha Movies

Viola Shafik's anti-biography shows at Shasha Movies' April/May program on films in films.

Content
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
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5. IN VITRO in Canada

Larissa Sansour and Soren Lind's short Science Fiction is officially selected to the SWANA Film Festival at Dunlop Art Gallery in Regina (Canada).

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, Arabic with English subtitles
more
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6. LIKE TWENTY IMPOSSIBLES in the USA

Annemarie Jacir is part of the Borders program of the Ecstatic Static platform from April 8th till 22nd.

Content
Occupied Palestine: A serene landscape now pockmarked by military checkpoints. When a Palestinian film crew decides to avert a closed checkpoint by taking a remote side road, the political landscape unravels, and the passengers are slowly taken apart by the mundane brutality of military occupation. Both a visual poem and a narrative, like twenty impossibles wryly questions artistic responsibility and the politics of filmmaking, while speaking to the fragmentation of a people.
short film, Annemarie Jacir, Palestine 2003, 17 min, 35mm or digital, colour, Arab./Engl. with Engl. ST, various additional languages available
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8. WAJIB in Offenbach

Annemarie Jacir's multi award winning film shows at FilmKlubb Offenbach in German yon 24th April 2022.

Content
Abu Shadi is a divorced father and a school teacher in his mid-60s living in Nazareth. After his daughter’s wedding in one month he will be living alone. Shadi, his architect son, arrives from Rome after years abroad to help his father in hand delivering the wedding invitations as per local Palestinian custom. As the estranged pair spend the day together, the tense details of their relationship come to a head challenging their fragile and very different lives.
fiction, Annemarie Jacir, Palestine/France/Germany/Colombia/Norway/Qatar/UAE 2017, 96 min, Arabic with German ST
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9. A WORLD NOT OURS in Berlin

Mehdi Fleifl's feature documentary is officially invited to this year's Spotlight of ALFILM - Arab Film Festival Berlin.

Content
A World Not Ours is an intimate, humorous portrait of three generations in exile in the refugee camp of Ein el-Helweh in southern Lebanon. Based on a wealth of personal recordings, family archives, and historical footage, the film is a sensitive and illuminating study of belonging, friendship and family. Filmed over more than 20 years by multiple generations of the same family, A World Not Ours is more than just a family portrait; it is an attempt to record what is being forgotten, and mark what should not be erased from collective memory.
documentary, Mahdi Fleifel, GB/LB/UAE 2012, 93 min, DCP, Arabic/English with German ST
more
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10. DVD/ VoD of the month - BIRDS OF SEPTEMBER

Birds of September remains one of the outstanding Arab documentaries so far this century (Middle East Eye)

Although Beirut looms over these people’s shoulders at all times, Birds of September represents an unexpected technical variation on the “city symphony.” ...By opting for slow, steady pans, Francis emphasizes her interviewees’ nostalgia, not the dynamism of the city they live in. (Film Comment)

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.

DVD-Info
Sarah Francis, Lebanon/Qatar 2013, 99 min, Arabic
Subtitles: English
Synopsis, credits, director’s biography
PAL, no regional code

Subjects
City, Beirut, Loneliness, Architecture, Portrait, Urbanism, Soundscape, social, anthropological, Essay, Lebanon, City Symphony

Awards
Best First Feature - International Mediterranean Film Festival Tétouan
White Goose Award - Best Film at DMZ Documentary Film Festival South Korea
Special Mention Pravo Ljudski Film Festival extra muros Competition Program Award
Best Documentary Award - Silk Road Festival Dublin
'Mention Francois Barat' from 'Les rencontres cinematographiques de Cerbere/Portbou

go to DVD shop | stream online
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