Lights! Camera! Festival!
This year's Arab Film Festival focuses on the films and filmmakers whose work served as a precursor to the Arab Spring, hence the theme: Before the Spring: Alternative Arab Cinema from 2005 through Today. The festival takes place Dec. 1-4 at the Arab American National Museum.
The festival covers a variety of themes and styles, featuring filmmakers from Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Syria, Palestine and Iraq.
The 2011 Arab Film Festival is presented by the AANM in collaboration with ArteEast and is made possible in part by the Kresge Foundation and DoubleTree Hotel – Detroit/Dearborn.
2011 Arab Film Festival Schedule
PACKAGE A
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Thursday, Dec. 1
5:30 p.m.: Opening reception with deluxe refreshments
Find out what's happening in Dearbornwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
6:30 p.m.
One-Zero/Wahed-Sefr
Dir: Kamla Abu Zikry
2009/Egypt
105 min.
Today is the final of the African Nations Cup 2008. And today, eight characters will be dealing with situations that further complicate their already complicated lives. At times of frustration with the political, economic and social realities, will the victory of the Egyptian football team consign to oblivion, even if only for one night, everyday troubles? Arabic with English subtitles.
PACKAGE B
Friday, Dec. 2, 6:30 p.m.
A Tribute to Omar Amiralay
Omar Amiralay was one of Syria’s premiere documentary filmmakers, who passed away in 2011 at the age of 67.
A Flood in Baath Country/Toufan Fi Balad Al Baath
Dir: Omar Amiralay
2003/Syria
46 min.
In 1970, a young Syrian filmmaker, filled with revolutionary fervor, made a beautiful film-poem to celebrate the great strides his nation was making toward modernization. 35 years later, the same filmmaker, Omar Amiralay, returns to the site of his first film, this time to atone for his “error of youth.” The dam, the construction of which he has depicted, has collapsed. In the village of Al-Machi, Amiralay looks unblinkingly at what has become of the dream of Arab socialism. Arabic with English subtitles.
The Misfortunes of Some/Massa’ibu Qawmen
Dir: Omar Amiralay
1981/Syria/France/Lebanon
52 min.
Hajj Ali makes a living as a taxi driver during the day, carrying citizens safely across the city, but he also runs a funeral home, waiting for “customers” to be delivered daily. As he documents one man’s existence in a civil war-ravaged Beirut, Amiralay creates a tragicomic portrait of a society held captive by conflict. Arabic with English subtitles.
PACKAGE C
Saturday, Dec. 3, noon
Tomorrow 6:30/Bokra Sitteh W’Noss
Dir: Gilles Tarazi
2008/Lebanon
23 min.
Farid has received his visa for emigration and ties up loose ends during his last night in Beirut. Alternately witty and melancholic, reflective and brash, the film captures the nervous energy of bidding farewells to the people and city that make one’s home. Arabic with English subtitles.
Prologue
Dir: Raed & Rania Rafei
2011/Lebanon/49 min.
In March 1974, a group of Lebanese radical leftist students occupied the campus of the American University of Beirut (AUB), as a protest against cultural and political imperialism and social injustices at a time when Lebanon was sliding into civil violence. Prologue revisits this emblematic incident in the history of the country through the eyes of young political activists and explores the sequence of events that led to the occupation of AUB in 1974 in light of present-day Arab revolutions. The film meticulously deconstructs the themes pertaining to any revolution: What drives change? What mobilizes the masses? What is the place of revolutionary violence? Prologue blurs the lines between reality and fiction, action and intention, past and present. Prologue is the initial phase of a feature film project on the 1974 occupation of the American University of Beirut. Arabic with English subtitles.
PACKAGE D
Saturday, Dec. 3, 6:30 p.m.
I Want to See/Je Veux Voir
Dir: Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige
2008/Lebanon/France/70 min.
While in Beirut to attend a glamorous banquet, legendary French actress Catherine Deneuve (Potiche, Belle de Jour) insists on being taken to the southern regions of Lebanon in order to see firsthand the devastation caused by Israel's month-long bombing campaign in the summer of 2006. Cleverly blurring the lines between documentary and fiction, the directors create a mesmerizing, thought-provoking travelogue in which they appear as filmmakers capturing Deneuve's road trip on camera. French and Arabic with English subtitles.
VHS Kahloucha
Dir: Néjib Belkadhi
2006/Tunisia
80 min.
This documentary on amateur Tunisian filmmaker Moncef Kahloucha rolls at least three films into one. Kahloucha produces, directs, buys props, casts parts, edits – and eventually premieres his Tarzan of the Arabs to Tunisian immigrants in Sicily. Belkhadi’s film is a charming elegy to the mystique of cinema and the passions it inspires. Arabic with English subtitles.
PACKAGE E
Sunday, Dec. 4, noon
The Shooter/Al-Takheekh
Dir: Ihab Jadallah
2007/Palestine
8 min.
Ramallah-based filmmaker Jadallah engages critically and satirically with the unspoken subtext of violence that surrounds representations of Palestine. The Shooter is a parody in which Palestinians are consciously “performing” the typecasting. Arabic with English subtitles.
The Time That Remains/Al-Zaman al-Baqi
Dir: Elia Suleiman
2009/Palestine/United Kingdom/Italy/Belgium/France
109 min.
Subtitled Chronicle of a Present Absentee, this humorous, heartbreaking film, (the final installment in a trilogy) is set among the Israeli Arab community and shot largely in homes and places in which Suleiman’s family once lived. Inspired by his father’s diaries and the director’s own recollections, the film spans from 1948 until the present, recounting the saga of Suleiman’s family in elegantly stylized episodes. Inserting himself as a silent observer reminiscent of Buster Keaton, Suleiman trains a keen eye on the absurdities of life in Nazareth. Arabic and Hebrew with English subtitles.
•••
All screenings take place in the 156-seat auditorium on the Lower Level of the museum.
Free, lighted parking is available in the municipal lot behind the Museum; enter lot by turning north from Michigan Avenue onto Neckel Street, immediately west of the AANM.
For driving directions, visit www.arabamericanmuseum.org or call 313.582.2266.
For further information, call 313.624.0215 or email aanmfilmfest@accesscommunity.org.
TICKET PRICES
Thursday, Dec. 1 Opening reception plus Package A film
AANM Member, $16
Non-member, $18
Individual packages (A, B, C, D, E)
Individual AANM Member package, $7
Individual non-member package, $9
To purchase tickets in advance, please visit www.arabamericanmuseum.org.
ArteEast presents the works of contemporary artists from the Middle East, North Africa and their diasporas to a wide audience in order to foster a more complex understanding of the regions’ arts and cultures and to encourage artistic excellence. ArteEast is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization established in 2003 by a group of artists, filmmakers, curators, scholars and educators. Learn more at www.arteeast.org.
— From the Arab American National Museum
