1. FAMILY ALBUMS at Shortat in Ramallah, Jerusalem, Jenin and Gaza City
2. THE FACEBOOK OF MY FATHER at Dokfest Kassel
3. MY NAME IS NOT ALI for libraries and institutions
4. FIDAI in Leipzig
5. Publications and Events
6. DVD of the month: LOOKING AWRY
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1. FAMILY ALBUMS at Shortat in Ramallah, Jerusalem, Jenin and Gaza City

We are happy to announce the Palestine premiere of the short film compilation FAMILY ALBUMS, a French-Palestine-UAE coproduction, at International Short Film Festival Shortat. Screenings take place in Ramallah, Jerusalem, Jenin and Gaza City.

Content
The Arab World is a region in unrest. Today’s young generation of artists was born into conflicts who’s beginning they do not know and which seem not to end. They carry their parents’ exiles, traumas and lost hopes in them. In Family Albums four filmmakers draw up a sensitive portrait of that region.
In Kabylia, Nassim Amaouche digs with his father in the rubble of the family home bombed in 1957 searching for his father’s lost childhood or a new start between both men.
Erige Sehiri too, must rediscover her father. It seems that the Tunisian revolution and his new addiction to Facebook drove him away. He even left his family and went back to his small Tunisian village.
Ahmad, Sameh Zoabi’s childhood friend, is handsome, 35 years old and still single, a quite problematic situation in this little Palestinian village of northern Israel. As his mother gave up to find him a wife, Sameh takes over.
Mais Darwazeh lives in Amman, a city of uprooted people. She builds her identity by gathering around her table close friends, chosen ingredients, and old recipies.
Nassim Amaouche, Mais Darwazah, Erige Sehiri, Sameh Zoabi, France/Palestine/UAE 2012, 82 min, digital, Arabic/Berber/French/English with English, French or Arabic subtitles
Artistic producer Raed Andoni | Executive producer Palmyre Badinier | a Les Films de Zayna production in co-production with ARTE France, Dar Films and Dubai Entertainment and Media Organisation / Enjaaz
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2. THE FACEBOOK OF MY FATHER at Dokfest Kassel

Erige Sehiri’s THE FACEBOOK OF MY FATHER, part of the omnibus film FAMILY ALBUMS is screening at Dokfest Kassel in Germany and is nominated for the Werkleitz Residency.

Erige Sehiri sets off to meet her father. It seems that the Tunisian revolution and his new addiction to Facebook completely changed him, driving him away, perhaps forever. He even left his family and went back to his small Tunisian village.
Erige Sehiri, France, Palestine, United Arab Emirates / 2012 / Documentary / 21'
Director Erige Sehiri | Pre-existing music Patrick Smith | Editing Nadia Ben Rachid | Sound Editing François Fayard
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3. MY NAME IS NOT ALI for libraries and institutions

The non-commercial rights of Viola Shafik’s MY NAME IS NOT ALI are now available for institutions and libraries.

This footnote to Fassbinder's ouevre should intrigue the many arthouse types still fascinated by the director's films and life. (Variety)

Content
His anti-racist film Ali – Fear Eats Soul (1973) gained German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder international acclaim. The protagonist, an Arab foreign worker, was played by Moroccan El Hedi Ben Salem M’barek Mohammed Mustafa, Fassbinder’s lover at that time. While the film itself courageously deals with the racism of post-war German society, its makers reproduced the insensibility and invention of the Other, fantasizing their own ‘Salem’. Collage-like, through interviews and archive material, My Name Is Not Ali uncovers the invention of El Hedi Ben Salem by the Fassbinder troupe, an image not revised by most of its members till today.
Viola Shafik, Egypt/Germany 2011, 93 min, HDCAM, German/Arabic/French with English ST
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4. FIDAI in Leipzig

Damien Ounouri’s award winning FIDA keeps touring German cinemas. In November it is showing at naTo in Leipzig.

A lyrical, informative, engaging testimony about one of the 20th century's most influential revolutions.(Tambay A. Obenson in Indiwire)

Content
During the Algerian revolution, my great-uncle joined his sister in France and integrated a secret FLN armed group. Settling of scores, attempted murder, hiding, imprisonment and finally expulsion in 1962, his personal journey tells the story of countless ex-fighters for Algerian independence, and echoes the current effervescence of the Arab World. Today, at the age of seventy, El Hadi reveals this dark part of his life.
Damien Ounouri, Algeria/France/China/Qatar/Kuwait/Germany 2012, 83 min
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5. Publications and Events

Taking Stock an article by Irit Neidhardt on Tunisian and Egyptian documentary film-making in the context of the uprisings that started in December 2010 is now online: English |  Arabic | German

German Schattenblick republished Irit Neidhardt’s Art as Weapon. Heteronomy and Self-determination (German) which was originally published in inamo 74 | summer 2013 and republished by Linksnet this autumn.

In the context of the retrospective STORM! at the International Documentary Film Festival in Leipzig Irit Neidhardt organized a screening of three PLO productions. The films differ in their cinematic form and their political agendas and thus represent the relatively wide range of productions under the umbrella of the PLO which’s heydays were the late 1960s till the early 1980s.

They Do Not Exist / Laysa lahum wujud
A title which quotes former Israeli Minister President Golda Meir. The film is a portrait in nine formally very diverse chapters of the Palestinian refugee camp of Nabatieh in southern Lebanon: its inhabitants’ solidarity with the fight for liberation, the anti-imperialist context and the destruction of Nabatieh by Israeli airstrikes in May 1974. The director, Mustafa Abu Ali, was one of the founding fathers of the PLO film organisation.
PLO 1974; Mustafa Abu Ali, 25 min, Arabic

Homeland of Barbed Wire / Watan al-Aslak al-Shaieka – in the presence of the director
Directors belonging to the PLO film organisations were barred from entering territories under Israeli administration. Kais Al-Zubaidi sent a West-German film team into the territories occupied in 1967. They talked to Palestinian peasants and refugees and to Israeli settlers. The former have lost their fields and meadows and are to be driven further East from the camps in which they lived since 1948. The latter call their new settlement area “liberated land”
PLO 1980; Kais al-Zubaidi, 61 min, Arabic/English

Born Out of Death / Wulidtu min al-mawt – in the presence of the director
The West-German director Monica Maurer made a number of important films for the PLO. The Israeli airstrikes against Beirut on 17 July 1981 killed 350 people, including a pregnant woman whose baby could be rescued from her torn-up womb. Maurer shows the people’s suffering and pain, their victimhood. She addresses the systemic causes of violence, referring back to the history of their country and formulating arguments for the necessity of a fight for liberation.
PLO 1981; Monica Maurer, 9 min, various language versions available
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6. DVD of the month: LOOKING AWRY

A Palestinian filmmaker is commissioned by an American organisation to make a documentary film, which is to depict Jerusalem as a city of peace and coexistence between Jews and Arabs.
But and while making the film, the filmmaker keeps running into situations that are very different from what he is trying to depict. The reality of things on the ground, proves to be much stronger than its representation. It reaches a point where the filmmaker decides that he is unable to finish the film.

Palestine 2001, Sobhi al-Zobaidi, docudrama, shortfilm, 29 min, Arabic/ English
Subtitles: English / Arabic
PAL, region free

Subjects
Jerusalem, Self-Determination, Religions, Film-Making, 2nd Intifada, Palestine, Violence

Festivals (selection)
Calgary International Film Festival
Arab Film Festival San Francisco
World Wide Video Festival, Amsterdam
MedFilm Festival, Rome
Arab Film Festival Rotterdam
Mediterranean Film Festival Montpellier
Goteborg Film Festival


Institutional rights
According to the rights you whish to acquire and your territory the fee varies, please place your order at via mail

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