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Lens on Syria: Thirty Years of Contemporary Cinema |
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Pacific Film Archives presents: September 7- October 12, 2006 UC Berkeley Art Museum THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS is cosponsored by the 10th Annual Arab Film Festival. For information on the festival’s screenings of Syrian films, please phone (415) 564-1100 or visit www.aff.org. THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS is part of “Lens on Syria: Thirty Years of Contemporary Syrian Cinema,” a touring exhibition organized by ArteEast (www.arteeast.org), a nonprofit arts organization based in New York that promotes the arts and cultures of the Middle East. At PFA, we wish to extend our gratitude to Rasha Salti, director and curator of the touring showcase, and Livia Alexander, executive director of ArteEast, as well as the Film Society of Lincoln Center, where the series was first presented, and from whom we have borrowed our exhibition title. The presentation of The Road to Damascus at PFA is
cosponsored by The Center for Middle Eastern Studies at UC Berkeley,
and by the 10th Annual Arab Film Festival. For information on the
festival’s screenings of Syrian films, please phone (415)
564-1100 or visit www.aff.org. Saturday, September 9, 6:30
PM A double wedding in a small village turns to high drama when one bride runs away and the other refuses to go on with her marriage. Oussama Mohammad’s first feature unveils the fragile balance holding a family together after an abusive father has been replaced by his successful but corrupt eldest son. The new family patriarch’s troubles are exacerbated by his complex relations with his brothers, one a pathologically enraged “second” son, and the other struggling with a loss of hearing caused by a violent blow administered by their father when he was just a child. “Absurdly, inventively funny, when it’s not being harshly satiric or heartbreaking” (Stuart Klawans, The Nation), Stars in Broad Daylight exposes the violence of arbitrary and absolute power in a patriarchal society. Although the film was produced by the National Film Organization of Syria, it cannot be screened there. Saturday, September 9, 8:45
PM Mohammad’s second film, made almost fifteen years after Stars in Broad Daylight, focuses again on a family as a microcosm for larger society. Living in a house perched precariously on a mountainside, three related families await the death of their common patriarch, and the announcement as to which grandson will be designated his heir. When the man dies without naming anyone, the families begin to fight among themselves. Mohammad fills each frame with visual rhymes and reflections, qualities that also feature prominently in the narrative (the title of the film translates to “Box of Life”). Despite the many differences among the three young men who are the film’s focus, each seems destined to make the same mistakes. “Sacrifices is not a story but an unsettling, fragmentary mood piece, evoking the yearnings, angers, and frustrations of people who are stuck in limbo” (Stuart Klawans, The Nation). Thursday, September 21, 7:30
PM The first documentary to present an unabashed critique of the impact of the Syrian government’s agricultural and land reforms, Everyday Life in a Syrian Village delivers a powerful jab at the state’s conceit of redressing social and economic inequities without consulting the people whose lives will be affected. Interviews with farmers, health workers, and a police officer contrast peasants’ regard for the state with state representatives’ attitudes toward the peasants. Sa’adallah Wannus, a prominent Syrian playwright and essayist, collaborated with documentary pioneer Amiralay on the project. The film remains banned in Syria. The original print has been restored and digitized, and was subtitled in English especially for this tour. Thursday, October 5, 5:30 PM
Free Screening! Trained as an electrician, Nazih Shahbandar became
fascinated with the technology behind film production, going on
to become a pioneer of Syrian cinema. In 1947, he set up a studio
fitted with film equipment that was almost entirely of his own fabrication.
An enthusiastic inventor, he wrote scripts, built sets, and created
new methods of sound recording and transmission, producing and directing
the first Syrian sound film. Including an extensive interview with
Shahbandar, Shadows and Light is an ode to those who have given
everything they had to create cinema. A
Silent Cinema (Un cinéma muet, Meyar
al-Roumi, Syria/France, 2001). Upon graduating from a film studies program in Paris, Meyar al-Roumi returns to his native Damascus, eager to start making films. But when the script he proposes is rejected by the censors, he is instead inspired to make a portrait of the Syrian filmmakers who have been affected most by censorship. A Silent Cinema is a courageous look at filmmaking in Syria today. Thursday, October 5, 7:30 White (Abiad, Antoinette Azriyeh, Syria, 2000, 12 mins, 35mm) shows how in the imaginations of children, the simplest of acts in nonsensical circumstances acquire profound ritual meaning. The young protagonist of A Moment of Joy (Lahthat farah, Walid Hreib, Syria, 2001, 7 mins, 35mm) succeeds in transforming drudgery and exhaustion into a transcendent experience. Our Hands (Abdellatif Abdel-Hamid, Syria, 14 mins, 35mm) is a visual essay on laboring, gesturing hands. Oussama Mohammad’s documentary Today and Everyday (Al-yaom wa kull yaom, Syria, 1986, 12 mins, 35mm) follows young children in preschool as they begin to be molded into conformity. The Pot (al-Qarura, Diana el-Jeiroudi, Syria, 2004, 20 mins, DigiBeta) is an unconventional documentary that gives women space to express themselves freely about the experience of pregnancy and its impact on their relationships with their bodies, in the shadow of a society that still regards them as vessels to carry progeny. Just Get Married! (Husam Chadat, Syria/Germany, 2003, 21 mins, DigiBeta) tells the story of a Syrian living in Germany; after his student visa runs out, he learns that home is where you make it.\ Friday, October 6, 7:00 PM A touching documentary shot in Sabra and Shatila,
Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. Director Malas interviews
the children, women, old people, and militants of the camps, asking
them about their dreams, “most of which are matters of nationhood,
desire, and hope” (Michael Atkinson, Village Voice). Many
participants in the film would be killed just a few months later,
in the infamous massacre at the camps led by the Lebanese Phalangist
forces. A Plate of Sardines—Or The First Time I Heard of Israel (Tabaq el-sardin, Omar Amiralay, Syria, 199718 mins) “The first time I heard of Israel, I was in Beirut, and the conversation was about a plate of sardines. I was six years old, Israel was two.” In the company of filmmaker Mohammad Malas, Omar Amiralay revisits the ruins of the destroyed village of Quneytra. There
Are So Many Things Still to Say . . . (Hunalika ashiya’
kathira kana yumken an yatahadath ‘Anha al-mare’...,
Omar Amiralay, Syria/France, 1997) A few months before the passing of his friend and
close collaborator, dramaturg Sa’adallah Wannus, Amiralay
listens to his friend’s somber and relentless words. There
Are So Many Things Still to Say . . . is a farewell to a generation
for whom the Arab-Israeli conflict has been the source of all disillusion.
Photographed by Etienne de Grammont. (50 mins) The story of the troubled beginnings of a family as well as a nation, The Night is set in the village of Quneytra, a border town on the Golan and a key battleground during the 1967 war. A young man and his mother visit the grave of a man who once fought for Palestine. His son, the director of the film, then reconstructs the story of this man, who joined the volunteer armies during the “Arab Revolt” of 1936. Stories diverge as to what happened when his father returned to Quneytra: some said he locked himself in the mosque and went mad, others that he spoke out too openly against the government and was silenced. Trying to overcome feelings of shame and humiliation that have long accompanied the image of his father, Malas tries to discover his father’s true history and give him a more honorable death. But exploring the past leads to burning questions that can only have bitter answers. Thursday October 12 7:30 PM In 1970, Amiralay made a short documentary, Film-Essay
on the Euphrates Dam ("Film-muhawalah ‘an sadd al-furat",
12 mins, B&W, DigiBeta) in praise of the ruling Baath party’s
project to construct an impressive system of dams. Years later,
after fatal construction flaws had been found, he returned to the
site of his original film in A Flood in Baath Country ("al-Tawfanm",
Syria/France, 2003, 46 mins, Color, Beta SP), a highly controversial
work that explores the metaphorical implications of these problems.
Without overt commentary or overt criticism, Amiralay’s film
exposes Baath party propaganda and its debilitating effects on the
people of the village of al-Mashi. The camera moves from students
to teachers and government officials, with everyone reciting the
exact same praises for the president and slogans glorifying the
ruling Baath party. “An astonishing film—and, of course,
a banned one” (Stuart Klawans, The Nation). Produced by Syrian
television, The Chickens (al-Dajaj) (1977, 40 mins, B&W, DigiBeta)
is yet another of Amiralay’s films that cannot be seen in
Syria. Under the guise of documenting chicken farms, Amiralay in
fact documents the massive failure of Syrian government policies
in an “unblinking analysis of institutional poverty”
(Michael Atkinson, Village Voice). The original print has been restored
and subtitled in English especially for this tour. |
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