20 years mec film
2. film program Loneliness / Unity on AFLAMUNA
3. NATION ESTATE in Brazil
4. 1982 NINETEEN EIGHTY-TWO in Germany
5. GATE #5 on AFLAMUNA
6. THE ONE MAN VILLAGE in Germany
7. DVD/ of the month - THE ONE MAN VILLAGE
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20 years mec film

The distribution company mec film emerged from years of curating Palestinian film programs in January 2002. It wasn't planned, yet seemed necessary. At that time, there was no wall between Israel and those Palestinian territories occupied in 1967. But the relatively new, more or less autonomous Palestinian post offices were not allowed to send items weighing more than 100g. The then popular Beta SP cassettes were heavier, even those for short films. Sobhi al-Zobaidi, one of the directors whose films I programmed over and over again, asked me to stop returning the betas as due to the back and forth he had to go to the Jerusalem post office illegally each time. He didn't want that kind of stress for film screenings in Germany. Soon festival curators from all over the world called our only family landline number at all conceivable times to request Sobhi’s betas. A friendship service I could not hold up in the long run, hence towards the end of 2001 I sent Sobhi a fax with a suggestion as to how to probably make things more practicable and maybe being a bit profitable for everyone. A few days later, the fax came back with a short note in the bottom corner saying "OK, Sobhi". The fax no longer exists, the Arab film landscape has changed massively in the last 20 years, the core of mec film's work remained almost the same. Some films from the catalogue, such as Tawfik Abu Wael's DIARY OF A MALE WHORE (2001) or Annemarie Jacir's LIKE TWENTY IMPOSSIBLE (2003) become classics, the betas are in the basement, their mov files are now being streamed. The oeuvre of Syrian director Mohamad Malas entered the mec film catalogue a few years ago. Together with Dunia Film in Damascus, we are trying to make the films accessible and to find copies that render Malas' works, classics of Arabic cinema, enjoyable again on the big screen.
As far as cinemas are concerned, mec film would probably not exist without the support of Jens Schneiderheinze and Thomas Behm from Die Linse in Muenster, without them I would never have understood how a cinema works and what it takes for films to be shown there. Eva Matlok helped spin a sustainable network for mec film via AG Kino and Ulla Wessler from Filmstadt Munich gave me a hand on the way into the festival world. Hania Mroue from Beirut DC was the first Arab curator to order from the mec film catalogue in the early 2000s, the cooperation between Beirut DC and mec film is still close today. Here's to the next 20!
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2. film program Loneliness / Unity on AFLAMUNA

Throughout February 2022 the program Loneliness / Unity | الوحدة with seven films, curated by Irit Neidhardt (mec film), is online at Aflamuna without geoblocking. The films change each week.

Loneliness / Unity | الوحدة
Many posters of Arab arthouse films of the past ten years show someone from behind or leaving, sometimes looking away. In rare cases where a character is looking at the camera there is still a distance, be it created by a curtain or by the person standing far afield. When the films show in Europe, the programmers usually do not use these posters. They look for a film still with the protagonist making eye contact with the viewer as is custom for the promotion of Western movies. As a distributor of several of these films, I first found this disturbing. Don’t programmers see that the person needs protection? At the same time, didn’t the director make the film to connect with the world? Looking at older Arab film-posters, it appears that protagonists of films dealing with loneliness are less hidden. What role does loneliness play in Arab cinema, and how did it change over time?
Loneliness, the mental pain of being isolated, always relates to the social. It seems to be specific to the Arabic language, though, that the word for loneliness, wehda, also means unity. For example, in English, French, or German, loneliness and unity are antipodes. Painful isolation has been integral to Arab cinema since its inception. continue in English | in Arabic
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3. NATION ESTATE in Brazil

Larissa Sansour's short Sci-Fi is showing in February at CINUSP in Brazil.

Content
Nation Estate is a 9-minute sci-fi short offering a clinically dystopian, yet humorous approach to the deadlock in the Middle East.
The film explores a vertical solution to Palestinian statehood: One colossal skyscraper housing the entire Palestinian population - now finally living the high life.
short Sci-fi, Larissa Sansour, Palestine/Denmark 2012, 9 min, digital, no dialogue
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4. 1982 NINETEEN EIGHTY-TWO in Germany

Highly acclaimed by the German press and with recommendation for schools, Oualid Mouaness' multi award winning feature showed in January in Bremen and is available for members cinemas with the new digital screening rooms of Cinemalovers throughout this year.

Content
In June of 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon, a country just north of its border was already reeling from its ongoing fractious war.  In this feature debut, director Oualid Mouaness revisits this cataclysmic moment in Lebanese history through a different lens: a kid's point-of-view at a quaker school on the outskirts of Beirut.  As the geopolitical conflict inches closer and closer, 11-year-old Wissam (Mohamad Dalli) is more intent on finding the courage to tell his classmate that he loves her.  For a dreamer like Wissam, who is more likely to be drawing than playing football, it's hard to comprehend the gravity of the impending violence.  But for his teachers, Yesmine (Nadine Labaki) and Joseph (Rodrigue Sleiman), the jets in the sky signal something far more dangerous.  As they try to mask their growing fears for the sake of the students, they also attempt to hide the fractures in their relationship. They fall on different sides of the political divide and look a way to reconcile a relationship that seems irreconcilable due the nature of the war besieging the country they love.
Fiction, Oualid Mouaness, Libanon/USA/Qatar/Norwey 2019, 100 min, Arabic with German subtitles
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5. GATE #5 on AFLAMUNA

In January the Arab cinema platform Aflamuna showed the most favoured films of the 2021 program, among them Simon el-Habre's Gate #5.

Content
They were young, loved adventures and had choices. In the 1960s and 70s thousands of young Lebanese left their villages and searched for a new life in the city - as countless like-minded people around the globe. The port of Beirut, the city's economic lung and central urban district, provided work for truck drivers - a job that stressed masculinity and became a lifestyle.
During the years of the civil war (1975-90) the drivers were needed to maintain the supply of food, goods, and sometime weapons between the divided sectors of country. Some were humble, others were heroic, yet all were adventuresomeness and felt free.
documentary, Simon El Habre, Lebanon/UAE 2011, 84 min, color, Arabic with Engl. ST
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6. THE ONE MAN VILLAGE in Germany

Simon El Habre's multi award winning feature documentary showed in January at CineArab in Freiburg.

Content
Semaan is leading a quiet life on his farm in the small village Ain el-Halazoun in the Lebanese mountains. The hamlet was completely emptied and destroyed in combats during the civil war in Lebanon between 1975 and 1990. Today, many years after an official reconciliation, its inhabitants which are all from one family regularly go back to the village to cultivate their plots of land or visit their houses and always leave before sunset.
In his comforting and humorous film Simon El Habre observes the life in his quasi ghost village and tries to reflect on the collective and individual memory in a country that seems to live in a collective amnesia and is vulnerable to a new civil war.
documentary, Simon El Habre, Lebanon 2008, 86 min, color, Arabic with Engl. ST, additional languages available
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7. DVD/ of the month - THE ONE MAN VILLAGE

A wonderful work, in every aspect. Radioeins
A film full of poetry and simple worldly wisdom. Berliner Morgenpost
A film that goes under the skin. Al-Mustaqbal

Content
Semaan is leading a quiet life on his farm in the small village Ain el-Halazoun in the Lebanese mountains. The hamlet was completely emptied and destroyed in combats during the civil war in Lebanon between 1975 and 1990. Today, many years after an official reconciliation, its inhabitants, which are all from one family, regularly go back to the village to cultivate their plots of land or visit their houses and always leave before sunset.
In his comforting and humorous film, Simon El Habre observes the life in his quasi ghost village and tries to reflect on the collective and individual memory in a country that seems to live in a collective amnesia, and is vulnerable to a new civil war.

DVD-Info
Lebanon 2009, Simon El Habre, documentary, 86min, Arabic
Subtitles: English, French (problem in synchronization of titles in French), German, Serbian, Spanish, Italian
Bonus: Deleted Scenes, Sort-film, Making-Of
PAL, region free

Subjects
Memory, Amnesia, Lebanon, Civil War, War of the Mountains, Couf, Jebel al-Shuf, Alternative Life, Peasant

Awards (Selection)
Hot Docs: Best International Feature 2009
Dubai International Film Festival: Special Jury Award, Arab Documentary 2008
One World International Documentary Film Festival Prague: Special Mention 2009
Monaco Charity Film Festival: Special Jury Award (Documentary Films) 2009
Arab Film Festival Rotterdam: Silver Hawk 2009
Expresión en Corto (Mexico): Honorable Mention Feature Length Documentary 2009
AMAL - Euro-Arab Film Festival: Best Documentary 2010
Murex D'Or: Best Lebanese Cinema Movie of the Years 2008/9

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