Press/Industry Screenings Schedule:

October 20th and 21st, 11 a.m at the Quad Cinema.
Only accredited journalists, distributors, and exhibitors will be admitted.

October 20th 2005, 11 a.m

I Love Cinema (Baheb el-Cima) by Oussama Fawzi. Egypt, 2004,125 min, 35mm (New York Premiere)
“If I go to hell, will I see all the famous actors there?” So goes young, movie-mad Naïm’s hopeful response to his strict father’s lectures on the evils of cinema. But while he pines for onscreen exploits in 1966 Cairo, Naïm has plenty of drama to watch right at home—illicit courtships, his mother’s repressed desire to pursue her art, and his father’s crisis of faith when he becomes disillusioned with the Nasser regime’s failure to live up to its ideals. Fawzi’s occasionally explicit film is a hilarious and tender family portrait as well as a refined critique of rigid religiosity. In Arabic with English subtitles.

October 21st 2005, 11 a.m

A Selection of short fiction and documentary films. Total running time: 106 min.

The Slap (Sili) by Ehsan Amani. Iran, 2004, 6 min, MiniDV (US première)
Clever, witty, and extraordinarily funny, The Slap appropriates the style, format, and humor of early Hollywood silent cinema. During a short ride through the Iranian countryside, a kiss in the dark leads the four characters to reveal their desires, egos, and suspicions. In Persian with English subtitles.

Oranges by Mouzahem Yahia. Algeria/France, 2003, 8 min, miniDV (US première)
Somewhere between a video game and a slapstick comedy, Oranges is a comedic yet sage parable of the futility of fighting. What begins as a simple volley between two men who want the same orange soon escalates to relentless battle, filmed amidst the abundant colors and sights of an open-air market. In Arabic with English subtitles.

Prêt-à-Porter Imm Ali by Dima el-Horr. Lebanon/France, 2001, 25 min, Beta SP (US première)
When the newly installed neon sign of Imm Ali's ready-to-wear boutique goes out in the middle of the night, speculations abound in the small village of the recently liberated southern tip of Lebanon. Visually eloquent, the film is the first to use the medium of fiction to capture how everyday folks negotiate the quotidian after the withdrawal of the Israeli army and the covert hegemony of Hizbollah. In Arabic with English subtitles.

House of Flesh (Beit min Lahm) by Rami Abdul-Jabbar. Egypt, 2005, 15 min, Beta SP (US première)
A visually stunning adaptation from a banned short story of the same title by renowned Egyptian writer Youssef Idriss, House of Flesh casts a widow who believes that her daughters' prospects for finding a husband would improve if there were a man in her house and agrees so to marry a blind young sheikh. In the house brimming with pent-up sexual desire and longing, the presence of the blind man becomes a spark of fire in a dry field of grass. In Arabic with English subtitles.

Beau Rivage by Claude El Khal. Lebanon, 2003, 8 min, Beta SP (US première)
The title Beau Rivage is taken from the name of the hotel that served, from 1997 and until recently, as the Syrian intelligence headquarters in West Beirut. It carries the psychological weight of interrogation, torture, and assassination. In this tightly edited film, dramatic, contrasting highlights and cutting irony reveal a cheerful hotel employee presenting the finest of services to an agonized woman in an isolation chamber. Beau Rivage offers a haunting and evocative metaphor. In French with English subtitles.

Face A/Face B by Rabih Mroueh. Lebanon, 2003, 10 min, MiniDV (New York première)
A metaphysical film exploring the nature of memory and knowledge, sight and sound, physical evidence and identity, and recollection and survival. Acclaimed Lebanese stage and performance director and actor Rabih Mroueh leads us on a seemingly autobiographical journey from his childhood, through the Lebanese civil war, to his present as he searches for meaning among the fragments of his memory, cassette tapes, and photos. In Arabic with English subtitles.

The Siren (al-Naddahah) by Zabaria Ibrahim. Egypt, 2005, 23 min, DVD (US première)
The group of passionate, jovial men enraptured by the simsimiyya, a folk-instrument indigenous to Egypt from the time of the pharaohs, gives this film its metaphorical title. Beginning with these characters, who come across as an Egyptian version of the Buena Vista Social Club, this short documentary looks at the amazing revival of musical folk traditions from near extinction and the creative innovations to develop and modernize them by various Egyptian musicians. In Arabic with English subtitles.

The Red (Kirmizi) by Demet Sert, Elif Akarsu, and Nuri Ertug Tugalan. Turkey,
2003, 12 min, Mini DV (US première)
What do a slaughterhouse worker and a classical Ebru (paper marbling) artist have in common? This near perfect little documentary brings together two colorful characters who find their unlikely bond over a poorly understood substance: bile. Layers and layers of mediation between art and blood make Kirmizi a highly complex meditation on the nature of work, art, aesthetics, and class. In Turkish with English subtitles.