Lens on Syria: More than Thirty Years of Contemporary Cinema



Lens on Syria: More than Thirty Years of Contemporary Cinema

May 5, 2006 - 18, 2007

ArteEast Presents:
A Retrospective: 30 Years of Syrian Cinema
Touring Universities November 2006 – May 2007

North America’s first ever showcase of feature, documentary and short films by Syria's most celebrated filmmakers and emerging independent young talent debuted at Lincoln Center in New York City in Spring 2006 and is now available on DVD format.

Click on the links below to download complete program details in PDF format.
Proposal
Programs and Synopses
Biographies
Screening Fees

To find out how to bring the tour to your campus, please contact us at filminfo@arteeast.org or call 718 282 5938

Our new publication, Insights into Syrian Cinema: Essays and Conversations with Contemporary Filmmakers, printed in conjunction with this tour, is now available for purchase from ArteEast through Rattapallax Press at www.rattapallax.com

Lens on Syria: Thirty Years of Contemporary Cinema is a groundbreaking exploration of Syrian cinema touring North America May-September 2006. The program showcases over 30 Syrian feature films, documentaries and shorts, many screening for the first time in the US, several of the films have been digitally remastered and subtitled in English for the series.

Debuting at New York's prestigious Lincoln Center from May 5th-18th 2006, the series has already been scheduled to travel to The Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago; The Canadian Film Institute in Ottawa; The Pacific Cinematheque in Vancouver; The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston; The Pacific Film Archives in Berkley (organized in collaboration with The San Francisco Arab Film Festival); The Georgetown University in Washington, DC; and The Northwest Film Center in Portland, Oregon.

Often described as Arab cinema's “best kept secret”, ArteEast's Syrian cinema series provides an unprecedented opportunity for audiences throughout North America to discover a politically timely and relevant program, ranging from nonfiction films and comedies to political dramas and historical epics, all representative of one of the richest--albeit lesser-known--of world cinemas.

One of the most compelling feats of Syrian filmmakers has been their ability to craft an unabashedly independent voice despite the fact that their films are produced by the state, a stellar achievement in Arab cinema. Films do not shy away from making poignant and social and political critique, far removed from dogma and didactism.
Syrian filmmakers have not only engaged with issues pertinent to Syria, they have also been profoundly engaged with the tragedy of Palestine. Premiering in the US in this program is Mohammad Malas' poignant documentary The Dream, filmed in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon just months before the notorious massacres took place. It is a unique document that has finally become available after digital remastering and subtitling.

Other films centered on the Arab-Israeli conflict include Tewfik Saleh's classic The Dupes, Mohammad Malas' The Night and Omar Amiralay's A Plate of Sardines-Or The First Time I Heard of Israel.

The program includes old cinematic gems that have been digitally remastered and subtitled in English specifically for this program, such as Omar Amiralay's 1974 documentary Everyday Life in a Syrian Village (which he co-authored with late Syrian playwright Sa'adallah Wannus), and his 1977 documentary, The Chickens that has received critical acclaim worldwide. Other digitally remastered films that are made available for the first time in North America is Oussama Mohammad's first short fiction film, Step by Step.

One of the highlights of Lens on Syria is a long-overdue tribute to master documentary filmmaker Omar Amiralay. Winner of numerous international awards for his films, Amiralay was the subject of a special homage at this year's Cinéma du Réel Festival in Paris. While Amiralay's subject matter ranges across the entire Arab and Muslim world, his camera always finds its way back home. The series features some of the Amiralay's most renowned and compelling work, including two movies on the Euphrates Dam, the first 1970 film a homage to the Baath party's project, the second 2003 film documenting the flood caused by construction flaws and posing the event as a metaphor for the regime.

Amiralay will be in attendance at the screenings of his films during the opening weekend at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York City (Friday, May 5 through Sunday, May 7). Also expected to attend is critically acclaimed filmmaker Oussama Mohammad and emerging experimental and documentary filmmaker Diana el-Jeiroudi. They will participate in Syrian Cinema Today and Tomorrow, a panel discussion moderated by Film Society's Program Director Richard Peña on Sunday, May 7, at 4:30 pm. The panel is free to the public.

A Plate of Sardines

 (Tabaq el-Sardin), by Omar Amiralay (Syria/France, 1997, 17 min, Color, DigiBeta PAL and DV-Cam NTSC)

The first time I heard of Israel, I was in Beirut, 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. The film has been subtitled in English especially for this program. More

A Silent Cinema

 (Un Cinema Muet) by Meyar al-Roumi (Syria/France, 2001, 29 min, Color, Beta SP PAL and DV-Cam NTSC)

Upon graduating from a film studies program in Paris, Meyar al-Rumi 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. The film is a courageous short documentary on filmmaking in Syria. More

Before Vanishing

 (Qabla el-Ikhtifa’), by Joude Gorani (France/Syria, 2005, 18 min, Color, DigiBETA PAL)

In Before Vanishing, filmmaker Joude Gorani travels from the beginning to the end of the Barada river that surrounds the capital city of Damascus. Often deemed iconic of nature's wondrous beauty, we discover how the Barada river has suffered from exploitation, neglect, pollution and unplanned urbanization. The film also uncovers the transformation of the river's social life and provides an intelligent measure of the distance between ideology and reality, in contemporary Syria. More

Blue-Grey

 (Azraq Ramadi), by Mohammad al-Roumi (Syria/France, 2004, 23 minutes, Color, Beta SP PAL and DV-Cam NTSC)

More

Dreams of the City

 (Ahlam al-Madinah) by Mohammad Malas (Syria, 1983, 120 min, Color, DigiBETA PAL and DV-Cam NTSC)

Mother, come and see how beautiful Damascus is!», little Omar cries out to his mother, a young woman drained by mourning. The widely acclaimed, partially autobiographical, Dreams of the City marks the turn towards auteur Syrian cinema, resurrecting the memories of childhood of the working poor. A young widow and her two sons are forced to move from their native Quneytra to Damascus, where her father forces them to fend for themselves. Against the backdrop of successive military coups that punctuated the turbulent 1950s in Syria, Adib, the eldest of the boys comes of age in the vast and overwhelming urban magic of Damascus. The image of mosques, faces and the greenery of Damascus swirl by as Adib witnesses a dizzying and violent day in the city. At last, the wounded child gazes at the full moon; the city shatters against it. The film earned eleven awards including the Tanit d’Or at the Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage, Tunisia in 1985, and The Golden Palm at the Valencia Festival, Spain in 1985. More

Everyday Life in a Syrian Village

 (al-Hayat al-Yaomiyyah fi Qaryah Suriyyah) by Omar Amiralay (Syria, 1974, 85 min, B&W, DigiBeta PAL and DV-Cam NTSC)

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. Interviews with farmers, health workers and a police officer contrast the peasants’ regard for the state with the mindset of state representatives toward those 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 very recently, and subtitled in English especially for this program. More

Exodust

 (al-Tirhal) by Rémond Boutros (Syria, 1997, 108 min, Color, 35 mm)

Set in the late 1940s and early 1950s in the city of Hama, this film captures a turbulent period in the modern history of the Arab world, rocked by the Palestinian nakbah, and a coup d'état in Syria at the hands of Husni al-Za'eem. In the whirlwind of this turmoil, Rémond Boutros tells the story a simple, poor stone carver who struggles for survival. He wanders endlessly, far from his wife and family, looking to feed them while evading the grip of the secret police. The film depicts how the working poor grappled with the brutality of living conditions in which their lives slipped from their hands. The stone carver looking desperately to etch his imprint, his identity on the stones he carved. More

Film-Essai on the Euphrates Dam

 (Film-Muhawalah ‘An Sadd al-Furat) by Omar Amiralay (Syria, 12 minutes, B&W, 1970, DigiBETA PAL and DV-Cam NTSC)

This first film by the veteran documentary filmmaker Omar Amiralay follows the construction of a dam on the Euphrates river that is supposed to bring tremendous improvement in the lives of villages around it. Thirty years later, the filmmaker will revisit the site in Flood in Baath Country, and the enthusiasm once generated by the Baath. The original print has been restored and digitized very recently, and subtitled in English especially for this program. More

Journey Into Memory

 (Rihla fi al-Thakira) by Hala Mohammad (Syria/Qatar, 2006, 45 min, Color, DigiBETA PAL and DV-Cam NTSC)

More

Just Get Married!

 by Hussam Chadat (Syria/Germany, 2003, 20 minutes, Color, Beta SP PAL)

Hilarious and heartwarming, Just Get Married! tells the story of Mr. Sharif, a Syrian living in Germany, whose student visa has finally run out. Desperate to find a way to stay in the country he has come to love, his futile attempts find him revisiting past girlfriends, responding to personal ads, and pleading with strangers. Eventually he learns that home is where you make it. More

Today and Everyday

 (Al-Yaom wa Kull Yaom) by Oussama Mohammad (Syria, 1986, 13 minutes, Color, 35 mm)

The filmmaker’s directorial debut after joining the National Film Organization, this short documentary follows young children in preschool as they become exposed for the first time to notions of learning, reciting, and proper pronunciation and molded into conformity. More

Nights of the Jackals

 (Layali Ibn Awah), by Abdellatif Abdul-Hamid (Syria, 1989, 102 min, Color, 35 mm)

Nights of the Jackals follows the life of a peasant family, whose days are spent plowing fields and nights are punctuated by the menacing howling of jackals. The stern father, a retired army officer, organizes his family’s life and labor as he would a small platoon. The eldest son is sent away to study, the beautiful daughter grows frustrated waiting for her painfully shy suitor to ask for her hand, and the younger son pines for the neighbor's wife. Their lives all change dramatically as the 1967 war breaks out, resulting in a brilliant rendering of the war’s impact on village folks. More

Our Hands

 (Aydina), by Abdellatif Abdul-Hamid (Syria, 1982, 14 min, Color, 35 mm)

The filmmaker’s first short film with the National Film Organization, produced after his return to Syria from the Soviet Union, Our Hands is visual essay on laboring, gesturing hands. More

Passions

 (Bab el-Maqam) by Mohammad Malas (Syria/France/Tunisia, 2004, 90 minutes, Color, 35 mm).

Veteran director Mohammad Malas tackles the rise of conservatism and religiosity with great dexterity in this beautifully lensed film. Passions follows Iman, an ordinary housewife, happily married and raising two kids of her own as well as the daughter of a brother imprisoned for political activism. Iman’s greatest passion is listening to the songs of the legendary Egyptian singer Umm Kalthoum—a passion mistaken by her brother-in-law for a love affair with another man. Inspired by a newspaper clipping, Malas’ film gracefully deals with themes of music, censorship and intolerance in Syrian society. More

Sacrifices

 (Sunduq ad-Dunya) by Oussama Mohammad (Syria/France, 2002, 113 min, Color, 35mm)

A fantastic and visually captivating cinematic fable, Sacrifices reflects on how violence and power legitimize themselves, producing rituals and a vocabulary to perpetuate themselves. It portrays the life of a large family held together by the absolute power of its patriarch, the grandfather, who fertilized the land, started the family, built the house and planted a large tree around which their lives revolve. The film opens as the grandfather is dying, and the family surrounds him in anguish and uncertainty. Life begins with death, young men are born as the patriarch expires, and fathers and heroes come back from the war only to dissolve into mud. Selected at Cannes Film Festival's «Un Certain Regard. More

Shadows and Light, the Last of the Pioneers: Nazih Shahbandar

 (Nouron wa Thilal) by Mohammad Malas, Oussama Mohammad and Omar Amiralay (Syria/France, 1994, 52 min, Color, Beta SP PAL and DV-Cam NTSC)

Trained as an electrician, Nazih Shahbandar became fascinated with the technology behind film production and was one of the pioneers of cinema production in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1947, he set up a studio fitted with film equipment that was almost entirely of his own fabrication. He wrote scripts, built sets, and innovated new methods of sound recording and transmission. As an enthusiastic inventor, he produced and directed the first Syrian film with sound. His dream was to film and screen a 3D film. An ode to cinema, this documentary is a long interview with Shahbandar. More

Step by Step (Khutwa Khutwa)

 Randa Chahal Sabbagh (Lebanon; 1978, 70 min.)

Tue. May 11, 2:15 p.m. & 6:15 p.m.
Screens with Another Time Another Lebanon (Liban d’autrefois). Total run time is 81 minutes.

Going beyond the headlines and drawing on years of research, Randa Chahal Sabbagh burrows deep into the complex causes of the civil war that erupted in 1975, including societal inequities, the contradictions of power-sharing among religious communities, and the greater Arab-Israeli conflict. More

The Chickens

 (al-Dajaj) by Omar Amiralay (Syria, 1977, 40 minutes, B&W, DigiBeta PAL and DV-Cam NTSC))

Produced by Syrian television, this film remains banned in Syria. The inhabitants of Sadad, a village in the Syrian countryside are seduced by promises that chicken farming will make them rich. After they abandon their usual activities, their investment turns to disaster under the watchful gaze of government officials driving Mercedes cars. Under the guise of documenting chicken farms, the filmmaker delivers a scathing critique of his government, and foretells the massive failure of its policies which have brought poverty and hunger to its people. The original print has been restored and digitized, and subtitled in English especially for this program. More

The Dream

 (al-Manam) by Mohammad Malas (Syria, 1981, 45 min, Color, DigiBETA PAL and DV-Cam NTSC)

Filmed in Sabra and Shatila, Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, shortly before the massacre in 1982, this documentary's principle reference is dreams, and not lived reality. It plays on this double register, where women, children, elderly and combatants speak the reality of their everyday, transposed eerily, in dreams, nightmares and premonitions. Ultimately they converge on what the Palestinians have lost: their homeland and a life with dignity. More

The Dupes

 (Al-Makhdu‘un) by Tawfiq Saleh, (Syria, 1972, 120 min, b&w, 35mm)

This spare black-and-white film is set in 1958, when three Palestinians in Basra, Iraq, decide to travel to Kuwait-each believing he can make a new life for himself there. The three men, from different generations, represent different perspectives on the Palestine issue. Concealed in the steel tank of a truck, the trio attempt to make their way across the border, but encounter fatal setbacks on the way. The Dupes is based on the 1962 novella Men in the Sun by slain Palestinian writer, artist, and resistance leader Ghassan Kanafani, and is one of the first Arab films to tackle the Palestinian issue. More

The Extra

 (al-Comparss), by Nabil Maleh (Syria, 1993, 105 min, Color, 35 mm)

Hounded by poverty, a young couple struggles to find a space to live and share their love. A rich friend, living the insouciance and joie de vivre of the moneyed classes, helps the protagonist find a room to lodge in. Here, the couple find themselves isolated, alone, and unable to find fulfillment in their shared love. The Extras, a film about the pernicious and destructive impact of social and economic marginalization, affirms the rights of all to live a life with dignity. It has earned the filmmaker critical acclaim worldwide. More

The Pot

 (al-Qarura)) by Diana el-Jeiroudi (Syria, 2004, 20 min, Color, DigiBETA PAL and DV-Cam NTSC)

The Pot is a short, unconventional documentary that gives space for women 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. More

There Are Many Things left I Would Like To Say…

 (Hunalika Ashiya’ Kathira Kana Yumken an Yatahadath ‘Anha al-Mare’…), by Omar Amiralay (Syria/France, 1997, 50 min, Color, DigiBeta PAL and DV-Cam NTSC)

A few months before the passing of his friend and close collaborator dramaturge Sa‘adallah Wannus, Amiralay listens to his friend's somber and relentless words, a farewell to a generation for whom the Arab-Israeli conflict has been the source of all disillusion. More

The Wash

 (Vaskeriet) by Hisham el-Zouki (Syria/Norway, 2005, 8 minutes, Color, DigiBETA NTSC)

Taking the dirty laundry takes on new meanings in The Wash. Two immigrants in Norway, working as cleaners for a company entrusted to prepare the site for the visit of the U.S. president, are suddenly thrown into disarray when blood begins to drip from the U.S. flag hanging high on its mast. The Wash is crafted like a caustic allegorical fable about perceptions of the U.S., and leaves the viewer with an open-ended field of interpretation More

They Were Here

 (Innahum Kanu Hun) by Ammar el-Beik (Syria, 2000, 8 min, Black/White, Beta SP NTSC)

Coming to terms with the end of the industrial era, They Were Here is an elegant and eloquently composed study that reverberates with lives lived, fading images and relics of retrospection. El-Beik makes a tightly drawn piece about public space, private contemplation and an ephemeral sensibility. More

Under the Ceiling

 (Tahta al-Saqf), by Nidal el-Dibs (Syria, 2004, 90 minutes, Color, 35 mm)

Giving a rare glimpse of life amongst younger generation Syrians, Nidal el-Dibs tells the story of Marwan, a videographer/director, and his group of friends growing up in a poorer sector of Damascus. Marwan is part of a micro-society whose frustrated members are trapped in turmoil, facing a bleak future, dead-end relationships and tedious daily routines. Only the love between Marwan and Lina can break the gloom that enveloped him following the death of a close friend, Ahmad, a man he idolized. Ahmad’s sudden death unfurls an avalanche of emotions that have dogged him, questioning the values and beliefs that he has held so far. Under the supervision of two leading Syrian directors, Oussama Mohammed and Abdellatif Abdul-Hamid, Nidal al-Dibs elicits convincing performances and delivers a first feature that offers a political view of what his generation is facing in modern Syria. More

Verbal Letters

 (Rassa’el Shafahiyyah), by Abdellatif Abdul-Hamid (Syria, 1991, 105 min, Color, 35 mm)

Set in the bright orange groves of a small village in the Syrian countryside, Verbal Letters has earned Abdellatif Abdul-Hamid frequent comparisons to French author Marcel Pagnol (Jean de Florette, Manon des Sources). The film, about love friendship, loyalty and the magic of the first kiss, is loosely adapted from the story of Cyrano de Bergerac. A young man with an oversized nose is too embarrassed to approach the beautiful young woman he has fallen deeply in love with. He dispatches his most trusted friend to recite to her his love letters, but she falls for the friend. The film is an ode of tenderness and humor to childhood, coming of age, the enchantment of the first love, and the pains of learning multiplication tables. More

White

 (Abiad), by Antoinette Azriyeh (Syria, 2000, 20 minutes, Color, 35mm)

In White children emerge from every nook and cranny of the city, carrying animals of pure white or black. They weave through alleyways, march across a bridge and finally congregate in the desert under a white banner. With solemnity they consult a blank piece of paper for direction and leave us to speculate about the meaning of their journey. Could this tribe of white represent innocence, possibility, imagination, or be a metaphor for a new political order? More