Saturday, 26 May 2012

Fast Forward to the Past: Cultural Institutions, Urban Development, and Regional Cinema in the Gulf Today

from Ibraaz:
Mohammed Rashed Buali, The Good Omen,2009, film still. Produced by Bahrain Film Production.
Written by Fareed Ramadan. Courtesy of Mohammed Rashed Buali

"When drawing a visual image of the Gulf, it is perhaps difficult to dissociate it from the elaborate architectural renderings peddled by ambitious architecture and engineering firms, and the glittering vista of skyscrapers, highways, and man-made islands that have come to epitomise the area. Writer and critic Sheyma Buali takes a look at the new crop of films, be they shorts, documentary or narrative films, that look past the computer generated images (CGI) to the fast-disappearing reality beneath it – Bedouin life-styles, livelihoods based on fishing, homes made of stone rather than steel, and the attempts of local peoples to adapt to their new surroundings."


read: FAST FORWARD TO THE PAST: CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS, URBAN DEVELOPMENT, AND REGIONAL CINEMA IN THE GULF TODAY

Saturday, 5 May 2012

interview with Mohanad Yaqubi for Ibraaz

rushes of Tal Al Zaatar, AAMOD, Rome. Courtesy of Mohanad Yaqubi

from Ibraaz:

"In this interview for Ibraaz, writer and critic Sheyma Buali talk to Palestinian filmmaker Mohanad Yaqubi about his latest project, Off Frame.  Working with found documentary footage of the first two years of the Lebanese Civil War shot by the Palestine Film Unit (PFU), these precious reels were lying neglected in Italy until Yaqubi re-discovered them in 2011.  He has since brought them to life again to show the depth of Palestine's filmmaking history, its role in shaping Palestinian identity, and it ties to the wider Third Cinema movement.  What unfolds here is a story of a specific form of 'militant cinema', in which "reels were treated as ammo" and a narrative of commitment and circumstance in which images revisit a history once though lost to the vagaries of war unfolds.  To this, Yaqubi adds his own question, namely: Was there more revolution in cinema than revolution itself?"

read: A MILITANT CINEMA: A CONVERSATION BETWEEN MOHANAD YAQUBI AND SHEYMA BUALI

Zeyneb, film still from Tal Al Zaatar, 1977. Courtesy of UNITEL FILMS/PFU

Thursday, 19 April 2012

15th London Palestine Film Festival

an overview of the upcoming 15th London Palestine Film Festival (published in Asharq Al Awsat)
April 20 to May 3

كتب المفكر الفلسطيني الراحل إدوارد سعيد ذات مرة عن السينما الفلسطينية باعتبارها تمثيلا «للهوية الوطنية». وقد يكون هذا صحيحا، فإن الهوية عنصر أساسي في فكرة «الأمة»، لكن فكرة وجود هوية واحدة خالصة، فكرة مضللة.
لا تتمثل قوة السينما الفلسطينية في تقديمها لخطاب شامل وموحد، بل لعدة خطابات تكشف عن تعددية وأفكار متنوعة ومئات القصص الإنسانية وجوانب متعددة من تاريخ لم يسرد بعد لهذا اليوم، والتي تتناول الجوانب المختلفة الكثيرة التي يعيشها الفلسطينيون أو يؤمنون بها أينما يكونون في مختلف صقاع الأرض. وتكمن قوة السينما الفلسطينية، كما قال سعيد، في أنها تقدم خطابا بديلا لكنه 
إنساني، منافيا لتوقعات الأفراد بأنه يشكل «تجرة» شخصية.


Wednesday, 29 February 2012

London Palestine Film Festival presents...


Three film screening events leading up to the main Festival in April. Check out the details on the events, the films and the filmmakers below.


PORT OF MEMORY + THE ROOF: KAMAL ALJAFARI DOUBLE-BILL & SCREEN TALK

Thursday March 29, 8pm

HACKNEY PICTUREHOUSE 
E8 1HE
The first of three keynote events leading up to the 2012 London Palestine Film Festival is this double-bill and artist screen talk at the new Hackney Picturehouse, celebrating the extraordinary cinema of Kamal Aljafari.

Kamal Aljafari first drew attention with The Roof (2006), an intimate elegy to the eroding spaces of Palestinian life in Israel. But it was his astonishing second film on home city Jaffa, Port of Memory (2009), that confirmed him as the most exciting Palestinian filmmaker of his time. Seamlessly woven of vérité, script, and appropriated material, Aljafari's is iconoclastic cinema that defies genres, prompting Sight & Sound to declare it:
"....work that can only be seen, not talked about... all that can be said is that it brings cinema to a place beyond the question of fiction, documentary and video art."

Conceived as companion pieces, this is a rare chance to experience The Roof and Port of Memory in the company of the director, who will speak with Omar Kholeif, Director of the Liverpool Arabic Film Festival and curator of Liverpool’s FACT multiarts venue.

NB: The screen talk will occur between the two films, each of which is an hour in length.

8pm: Port of Memory, 63min
9:15pm: Kamal Aljafari in conversation with Omar Kholeif + Audience Q&A, 30min
9:45: The Roof, 61min


ADALAH/AMNESTY SCREEN TALK: PALESTINIAN CITIZENS OF ISRAEL: CURRENT CHALLENGES & PRIORITIES

Thursday April 5th, 18:15

Amnesty International UK
HUMAN RIGHTS ACTION CENTRE
EC2A 3EA
register now(tickets collected on the night)

The second of the PFF’s 2012 pre-Festival events is an exclusive screen talk with Adalah:The Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel and Amnesty International UK.
Adalah is the leading body dedicated to the rights of the Palestinian population in Israel. Working with award-winning directors including Rachel Leah Jones, it has made powerful films on the increasingly precarious situation faced by the minority.

Following a screening of 3 recent short films, Adalah advocate Suhad Bishara will discuss threats faced by the Palestinian population today with Amnesty UK campaign manager Kristyan Benedict.
Suhad Bishara is Director of Adalah's Land and Planning Rights Unit. She has worked withAdalah since 2001, specialising in land and planning rights. She holds an LLB. in Law from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and an LLM in Public Service Law from New York University. A former partner in a private firm specializing in urban planning law, she has served as a legal consultant to the Association of Forty, the Arab Steering Committee for Urban Planning in the Galilee Society, and the Hotline for Battered Women. She is former Chairperson of the Committee for Educational Guidance for Arab Students and a founder of the Kayan Feminist Organization.


PREMIERE: LAST DAYS IN JERUSALEM: FOLLOWED BY A SCREEN TALK WITH DIRECTOR TAWFIK ABU WAEL

Thursday April 12, 20:30

CINÉ LUMIÈRE
SW7 2DT
tickets now on sale (select date from down menu)

The last of our 2012 pre-Festival events is this UK Premiere of Tawfik Abu Wael's much-anticipated Last Days in Jerusalem, followed by a Q&A with the award-winning director.

Nour and Iyad, a Palestinian couple in East Jerusalem, are preparing to move to Paris. He is a surgeon at the top of his game, she an actress from a wealthy family. When news of a terrible accident sees Iyad return to his hospital and delay their departure, Nour senses abandonment and starts to question their move...

Abu Wael’s debut feature, Atash/Thirst (2004), won the International Critics Prize at Cannes and saw him named "the most exciting Arab filmmaker to have emerged in more than a decade" by Sight & Sound. This followup is a triumph: a taught psychological drama about one Jerusalem couple's wrenching final days as they tear themselves from home, from the familiar, and even from each other...

Tawfik Abu Wael was born in 1976, in Umm al-Fahm, in northern Israel. He graduated in directing from Tel Aviv University, where he also worked in the film archives. He taught drama at the Hassan Arafe School in Jaffa, and in 2001 made his first short, Diary of a Male Whore, as well as the documentary Waiting for Salah Al-Din. His first feature, Atash/Thirst, won the Fipresci Prize at the Semaine de la Critique in Cannes. Last Days in Jerusalem is his second feature. Tawfik also works as a theatre director.

Saturday, 21 January 2012

review: Tahrir 2011: the Good, the Bad & the Politician

my review in Kalimat


Tahrir 2011: the Good, the Bad & the Politician: too soon or soon enough?


Almost one year on, the political and social shifts that have gone on in our region still stand as unprecedented.  While perhaps the euphoria of hope is starting to balance out into a dire and perplexing reality, for some countries the honeymoon is way over, the time to rebuild is starting to lag and ideological complexities are getting thicker.  For others, the fight marches on.  

read more

Monday, 28 November 2011

review: Goodbye (Arabic)

review of Iranian fim Goodbye (published in the pan-Arab daily AsharqAlAwsat)  


في الآونة الأخيرة بشكل خاص، تكررت عبارة «إيران سجن» في عدد من الأفلام، بدءا من فيلم «الموجة الخضراء» وحتى فيلم «هذا ليس فيلما» للمخرج جعفر بناهي. ولم يستخدم فيلم «إلى اللقاء» للمخرج محمد رسولوف هذه العبارة مباشرة وبشكل صريح، ولكنه استعاض عنها بالإشارة إلى التعقيدات السياسية والشخصية، والحياة السياسية الصارمة، وافتقار المواطن العادي إلى السلطة في نهاية 
المطاف.

Thursday, 3 November 2011

review: LFF 2011 MidEast films

BFI London Film Festival 2011 Round Up: World Cinema in Little White Lies


Three very different films from the Middle East highlighted the LFF's World Cinema strand this week.

With week two of the 55th London Film Festival almost done, it's time to reflect on the most talked about films from the World Cinema strand, the most intriguing and illuminating of which came from the Middle East.

read on...

Thursday, 13 October 2011

Winds of Change: Cinema from Muslim societies


London’s Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), in collaboration with the academic publication “Third Text,” presented “Winds of Change: Cinema from Muslim Societies,” a series of talks and Islamic films.
The program took place between Sept. 21 - 25 at the ICA in London. It included two panel discussions and eight films pertaining to Islam in the context of social, national and regional politics. The event did not uphold any inherently Islamic themes, but rather connected the current political situation in the Arab world to questions regarding media definitions, colonial histories, post-colonial theory, gender and Islam’s own politics.
read on...