1. LIKE TWENTY IMPOSSIBLES in the USA (online)
2. IN VITRO in Lithuania
3. IN THE FUTURE THEY ATE FROM THE FINEST PORCELAIN in Germany
4. 1982 NINETEEN EIGHTY-TWO in Germany
5. events
6. DVD/ of the month - HAUNTED
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1. LIKE TWENTY IMPOSSIBLES in the USA (online)

Annemarie Jacir's short film classic from 2003 shows in June in ArteEast's program on the Second Intifada (online).

Content
Occupied Palestine: A serene landscape now pockmarked by military checkpoints. When a Palestinian film crew decides to avert a closed checkpoint by taking a remote side road, the political landscape unravels, and the passengers are slowly taken apart by the mundane brutality of military occupation. Both a visual poem and a narrative, like twenty impossibles wryly questions artistic responsibility and the politics of filmmaking, while speaking to the fragmentation of a people.
short film, Annemarie Jacir, Palestine 2003, 17 min, 35mm or digital, colour, Arab./Engl. with Engl. ST, various additional languages available
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2. IN VITRO in Lithuania

Larissa Sansour and Soren Lind's sci-fi was presented at Meno Avilys in Vilnius (Lithuania) on June 3rd, 2022.

Content
In Vitro is set in the aftermath of an eco-disaster. An abandoned nuclear reactor under the biblical town of Bethlehem has been converted into an enormous orchard. Using heirloom seeds collected in the final days before the apocalypse, a group of scientists are preparing to replant the soil above.
In the hospital wing of the underground compound, the orchard’s ailing founder, 70-year-old Dunia is lying in her deathbed, as 30-year-old Alia comes to visit her. Alia is born underground as part of a comprehensive cloning program and has never seen the town she’s destined to rebuild.
short Sci-fi, Larissa Sansour & Soren Lind, Palestine/Denmark/UK 2019, 28 min, digital, picture ratio 1:2.66, Arabic with English subtitles
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3. IN THE FUTURE THEY ATE FROM THE FINEST PORCELAIN in Germany

Larissa Sansour and Soren Lind's Sci-Fi will be shown on 22 June 2022 at Maximiliansforum in Munich.

Content
In the Future They Ate From the Finest Porcelain resides in the cross-section between sci-fi, archaeology and politics. Combining live motion and CGI, the film explores the role of myth for history, fact and national identity.
A narrative resistance group makes underground deposits of elaborate porcelain – suggested to belong to an entirely fictional civilization. Their aim is to influence history and support future claims to their vanishing lands.
short Sci-fi, Larissa Sansour & Søren Lind, Palestine / UK / Denmark / Qatar 2015, 29 min, cinescope, color, Arabic with Engl. or French ST
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4. 1982 NINETEEN EIGHTY-TWO in Germany

Oualid Mouannes' multi-award winning 1982 opend in German theatres in November. On June, 6th it showed at Die Linse cinema in Muenster.

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. events

On 2nd June 2022 Irit Neidhardt (mec film) gave an online-talk at the Meno Avilys cultural centre in Lithuania.
Pioneers, Divas, Visionaries – The Women of Arab Cinema
Since the first film with an entirely Arab and African cast and crew, Zohra - written, edited and performed by Haydée Samama Chikly Tamzali -, was released exactly 100 years ago in Tunis, women have been playing a crucial role in Arab filmmaking. They have been among the very first producers, introduced the star system, went with their cameras to the frontlines of the too many wars, founded cinemas, design sound, give voice to various parts to their societies, recount history and envision future. This talk gives an overview on Arab film history following its female workers.

On June 4th Irit Neidhardt (mec film) thought a workshop at the intercultural center Ulme in Berlin, on behalf of the Ibn Rush Fund.
The Holy Land - a Real Place? Pictures of Palestine
- For teachers in school and extracurricular educational institutions -
Using photographic images that were mainly made before the Nakba, the expulsion and flight of the Palestinians in 1948, the workshop deals with the question of the origin of orientalist images of Palestine. Who portrayed Palestine at what time and for what purpose? It is about Christian-religious photography, British-colonial and Zionist images, as well as Palestinian everyday and press photography.
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6. DVD/ of the month - HAUNTED

Haunted is not a conventional film. Rather, it draws the viewer into the harrowing interim world of refugees and displaced people. (filmdienst)

While many conflict documentaries naturally perpetuate the demarcation between military and civilian actors, Yazji's presentation of her subjects reflects the condition of individuals where that distinction has been effectively eradicated. By challenging the discernibility of that seen through a snipers lens, sovereign verticality is for a moment symbolically refuted. (Ibraaz)

Content
“When the bombs fell, the first thing we did was run away. It was not until later that we realized we had not looked back. We were not allowed to say goodbye to our home, our memories, our photos and the life that was lived within them. We have become vacant like these spaces; our hastily packed belongings and the forgotten things haunt us.” An uncertain existence followed the escape and expulsion from Syria that tumbled into a physical and mental nowhere, a non-space between yesterday and tomorrow. Haunted tells of the loss of home and security, of the real and metaphorical meaning which a house, a home has in one’s life.

DVD-info
Liwaa Yazji, Syria 2014, documentary, 112 min, Arabic
Subtitles: English, French, Spanish, German, Turkish, Romanian
DVD PAL, region free

Subjects
Syria, Refugees, Home, Civil War, Escape, Expulsion, Citizen, Portrait

Awards
FID Marseilles: Special Mention of the First Film Prize
Festival of the Arab Film Gabès: Bronze Prize

Institutional rights
According to the rights you wish to acquire and your territory the fee varies, please contact us via email.
 
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