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program notes and times
* Director will be present
DETERMINATION aka RESOLUTION / AL-AZIMAH
Kamal Salim, Egypt, 1939; 108 minutes
A classic film of Egyptian cinema, marking the beginning of the realist
tradition: Boy meets girl, but unlike most early films the boy is a credible
representation of a young man from a traditional quarter. Anwar Wagdi plays the
upper-class fop against whom the hero is contrasted.
Friday, November 1: 2 pm
Tuesday, November 5: 4:30 and 9 pm
FOOL'S ALLEY / DARB AL-MAHABIL
Tewfiq Saleh, Egypt, 1955; 90 minutes
In Saleh's debut film, the local fool finds a winning lottery ticket in a
neighborhood. Suddenly, all of the relationships in the community are
transformed, as if a veil had been removed. Everyone fights for the wealth,
brother against brother, until the fool finds a very foolish place to hide this
disruptive element--and saves them all.
Friday, November 1: 4:15 pm*
Monday, November 4: 4:15 and 8:30 pm
THE BEGINNING AND THE END aka THE DEAD AMONG THE LIVING / BIDAYAH WA NIHAYAH
Salah Abou Seif, Egypt, 1960; 130 minutes
The Beginning documents the inexorable slide of a middle-class family down
the socioeconomic ladder. A plain daughter--seduced and abandoned--is forced
into prostitution, and her older brother finds no way to make a living except
by dealing drugs. The two combine their earnings to send a younger sibling
(Omar Sharif) to military school so that he can become a respectable officer.
But it seems that none of them can truly escape the downward spiral of their
lives. A superb performance by Sharif, and Sana' Gamil as the plain sister is
heartbreaking.
Friday, November 1: 6:45 pm
Sunday, November 3: 2 pm
THE FLIRTATION OF GIRLS / GAZL AL-BANAT
Anwar Wagdi, Egypt, 1949; 120 minutes
A screwball musical that turns surreal toward the end, featuring
performances by four of the top stars of the 40s: Anwar Wagdi, Leila Murad,
Naguib al-Rihani (his last and best work) and Youssef Wahbi. A poor
schoolteacher is hired by an aristocratic father to give private lessons to his
failing daughter. The teacher falls in love with his pupil, but keeps his
emotions to himself, while saving her from a number of romantic mishaps. The
music is excellent and the dialogue often witty and fast-paced enough to rival
an American screwball comedy.
Saturday, November 2: 5 pm
Sunday, November 3: 9 pm
CAIRO STATION / BAB AL-HADID
Youssef Chahine, Egypt, 1958; 90 minutes
Cairo's main railroad station is the setting for society in small, a
community comprised of luggage carriers and soft-drink sellers who live in
abandoned traincars. A crippled newspaper dealer, Kinawi (played by the
director himself), falls madly in love with a beautiful and indifferent
lemonade seller, who has eyes only for the handsome Abu Sri'. Swept away by his
obsessive desire for Hanuma, Kinawi kidnaps her, with terrible consequences.
This Chahine masterpiece explores sexuality and repression, madness and
violence, among the marginalized.
Wednesday, November 13: 2 and 6:15 pm
STARS IN BROAD DAYLIGHT / NUJUM AL-NAHAR
Usama Muhammad, Syria, 1988; 115 minutes
In his debut feature film, director Muhammad explores the inexorable
dissolution of a family, ironically during the planning of a wedding, the kind
of ritual that ought to bond family members together in shared joy. As both
bride and her blind brother look for a way out, Stars exposes the divisive
dynamics of patriarchal oppression, and the terrible connections between
familial and sociopolitical violence.
Saturday, November 2: 9:30*
Wednesday, November 6: 4 and 8:30 pm
KIT KAT
Daoud Abd al-Sayyid, Egypt, 1991; 112 minutes
Based on a novel by Ibrahim Aslan, Kit Kat is the poignant story of Sheikh
Husni, a blind man who has mastered the art of appearing as though he has some
sight. He inserts himself into the life of everyone in his poor neighborhood,
trying to squeeze every drop of life from every minute of the day and night.
His passionate love of life eventually touches all he encounters.
Sunday, November 3: 4:30 pm* (producer Hussein Kalla)
Thursday, November 7: 2 and 6:15 pm
NAH'LA
Farouk Beloufa, Algeria, 1979; 120 minutes
A recognized classic of the Arab screen but unfortunately little-seen by
audiences, Beloufa's film has had a problematic history, and its troubles with
censorship and banning has made it a critic's cult film. Nah'la has been called
the most important film in Algerian cinema, as it explores both women's issues
as well as Arab nationalism. A Palestinian singer, Nah'la loses her voice on
stage every time she sings the word "I"; her plight suggests that of silenced
Palestinian people everywhere. She becomes involved with Larbi, an Algerian
reporter, a quintessential observer who can commit to nothing--though he's
searching for his Arab roots.
Sunday, November 3: 7 pm*
Wednesday, November 6: 2 and 6:15 pm
A SUMMER IN LA GOULETTE
Ferid Boughedir, Tunisia, 1995; 100 minutes
1967, La Goulette, a port village near Tunis shortly before the Six-Day
War: A relaxed atmosphere and an appreciation of "the good life" dominate in a
community where different cultures co-exist harmoniously and intermarriage is
not discouraged. Three families, Muslim, Jewish, and Catholic, enjoy such
strong ties they succeed in rising above all hardships, despite the poverty
around them. Then one day, the three daughters, jealously guarded by their
respective fathers, refuse the husbands chosen for them--and the resulting
tensions reveal communal faultlines in this richly imaginative story of a town
and its people.
Saturday, November 2: 7:15 pm*
Monday, November 4: 2 and 6:15 pm
THE LAND / AL-ARD
Youssef Chahine, Egypt, 1970; 130 minutes
Chahine's classic film was adapted from Abdel Rahman al-Sharqawi's
well-known novel by the same title. Eight years in the making, this epic film
about feudalism in rural regions was named the best Egyptian film ever made in
a recent poll of Egyptian film critics. Chahine chronicles the struggle of a
small village of peasants against the careless inroads of the local large
landowner. The Land shows why political oppression doesn't necessarily lead to
a sense of solidarity among the disinherited.
Tuesday, November 5: 2 and 6:40 pm
CHRONICLE OF THE YEARS OF EMBERS / WAQAI' SANAWAT AL-JAMR
Muhammad Lakhdar-Hamina, Algeria, 1975; 175 minutes
Winner, Grand Prix, 1975 Cannes Film Festival
A lyrical account of the conditions that led to the Algerian war of
liberation from France, Chronicle relates a peasant family's awakening to
colonialism and the independence struggle in the perriod from 1939 to 1954.
Exploitative French colonials, a mad village prophet, drought-stricken peasants
and determined revolutionaries are just some of the characters that make this
film a grand epic of betrayal and resistance.
Friday, November 8: 2 pm
Sunday, November 10: 3:45 pm
THE CRUEL SEA / BAS YA BAHR
Khalid Siddiq, Kuwait, 1971; 90 minutes
Acknowledged as a masterpiece, the first Kuwaiti feature provoked
passionate controversy on its release in 1972. Set in Kuwait prior to the
discovery of oil, Sea is about pearl-divers who live on the fringes of an
impassive sea. Said dives for the largest pearl so he can marry a woman from a
wealthy family. The film contains some violent scenes, among the most
accusatory in Arab cinema. The Cruel Sea savagely criticizes a feudal
mercantile society deeply entrenched in its privileges, the condition of women,
and the hold of religion.
Friday, November 8: 5:45 and 9:50 pm
Sunday, November 10: 7 pm
NIGHT OF COUNTING THE YEARS aka THE MUMMY / AL-MOUMIA'
Shadi Abdel Salaam, Egypt, 1975; 110 minutes
A highly atmospheric, beautiful and ritualistic story of the conflicts
within a desert tribe when the legendary cache of royal mummies was discovered
at Deir Al-Bahari in 1881. The tribe makes a living by robbing tombs. When the
archaeologists from Cairo discover the hoard, their livelihood is gone. The
film expresses the dilemma of the contemporary Egyptian who stands on venerated
soil more than 7,000 years old yet is also anchored in a troubled
present.
Friday, November 8: 7:45 pm
Saturday, November 9: 3:45 pm
LITTLE WARS / HURUB SAGHIRAH
Maroun Baghdadi, Lebanon, 1981; 108 minutes
This film and Beirut al-Liqa' (Beirut the Encounter) are the two films that
have established Lebanese cinema. Little Wars focuses on a young woman and two
men, a sort of lost generation, to show the raw emotions of civil strife, and
the shabby victories of a stop-start war. Soraya, pregnant by Talal, and Srour
each gradually become dissociated from desire, death, reality as their society
slides from "paradise" into hell.
Saturday, November 9: 5:45 pm
Tuesday, November 12: 2 pm
CITY DREAMS aka DREAMS OF THE CITY / AHLAM AL-MADINAH
Muhammad Malas, Syria, 1983; 126 minutes
This outstanding, partly autobiographical first feature is one of the best
portraits of the 50s and early 60s, a crucial period in Syria's history.
Through the eyes of Dib, a little boy whose life is divided between his widowed
mother's enclosed universe and the teeming back streets of old Damascus, City
Dreams shows the tumul-tous times of this period: a military dictatorship
falls, new elections are held, the Suez war breaks out, and Arab unity seems
within reach.
Saturday, November 9: 8 pm
Tuesday, November 12: 4 pm
BADIS
Abd al-Rahman al-Tazi, Morocco, 1989; 90 minutes
On the island of Badis, a Spanish enclave in Moroccan territory, Europeans
and Africans come together, acting out the dynamics of their respective worlds
and cultures. Two women--the wife of a schoolteacher and the wife of a
fisherman--develop a friendship that results in each of them yearning ever more
strongly for freedom.
Sunday, November 10: 9 pm
Thursday, November 14: 4 pm
SILENCES OF THE PALACE
Moufida Tlatli, Tunisia; 127 min
Alia, the protagonist of Moufida Tlati's stunning debut film, is born to
serve men. Her mother is a servant in the palace of the Bey--dispensing food,
and her body, to the royal princes of Tunisia. As Alia, now a singer in
post-colonial Tunisia, looks back at her childhood in the palace in the 1960s,
she must come to terms with the meaning of her mother's life and the tradition
of bondage she's attempting to escape. Tlatl's quietly observant eye records
the beauty, the decadence,and the horror of this stifling, now vanished world.
A 1994 New York Film Festival selection.
Wednesday, November 13: 4 and 8:30 pm*
THE DUPED / AL-MAKHDU'UN
Tewfiq Saleh, Syria, 1972; 110 minutes
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 Duped is based on the 1962 novella Men in the
Sun by Palestinian writer, artist, and resistance leader Ghassan Kanafani, and
is one of the first Arab films to tackle the Palestinian issue.
Thursday, November 14: 2 pm
Saturday, November 16: 8:15 pm
A WOMAN'S YOUTH / SHABABU IMRA'A
Salah Abou Seif, Egypt, 1956; 126 minutes
A young student rents a room in a Cairo boardinghouse, and is soon torn
between his innocent fiancée from his village and his very seductive
landlady. Famous dancer Tahiyyah Karioka plays the older woman in a powerful
portrayal of the plight of a strong, sexually active woman in a community that
denies her freedom. A Woman's Youth was a very radical film for the Egyptian
screen of the 50s.
Friday, November 15: 2 and 6:40 pm
BEIRUT THE ENCOUNTER / BEIRUT AL-LIQA'
Borhan Allaouie, Lebanon, 1982; 109 minutes
In 1977, when telephone communications are re-established between the
warring East and West sides of Beirut, two old college lovers, one Christian,
the other a Shiite, finally make contact. Zeina is leaving for the USA the next
morning, so they both record their innermost feelings during the night,
promising to exchange tapes at the airport. It is as if each side of the city
were trying, in vain, to be heard by the other. An acutely observed, moving
film.
Friday, November 15: 4:30 and 9 pm
Sunday, November 17: 4 pm
HALFAOUINE, BOY OF THE TERRACES
Ferid Boughedir, Tunisia/France, 1990; 98 minutes
A young Tunisian boy is in a hurry to be called a man but hesitant to leave
the sweet ness of the world of women. Thirteen-year-old Noura, who looks young
for his age, is still allowed into the women's baths with his mother. Thus, he
able to brag to his older friends about what he sees inside, until, on the very
day of his little brother's circumcision ceremony, he is thrown out for staring
in a most unchildlike manner. His subsequent rite of passage into adulthood is
smoothed by a libertine shoemaker (played by the founder of Tunisia's renowned
New Theater), and two women, his mother's beautiful, non-conformist cousin, and
a 15-year-old maid.
Saturday, November 16: 4 pm
Sunday, November 17: 8:15 pm
Tuesday, November 19: 4 pm
SUMMER THEFTS / SARIQAT SAYFIYYAH
Yousry Nasrallah, Egypt, 1988; 102 minutes
It is the summer of 1961, the summer of the announcement of the
Nationalization Decrees by Nasser, and the agrarian reform. In this
autobiographical film, we witness the anxious reactions to a changing world of
an upper-class family as they retreat to their large family estate, where each
member of the family has his or her own drama to play out. Two decades later,
one of the sons returns to the ruined house to recapture the poignancy of the
past and to measure its relationship to a very different present.
Saturday, November 16: 6 pm
Sunday, November 17: 6:15 pm
Tuesday, November 19: 2 pm
THE GREEDY ONES / AL-TAHALIB
Raymond Boutros, Syria, 1991; 90 minutes
In a Hamah full of clan alliances, corruption and conflict, Abu Asad tries
to live a decent and quiet life, until his older brother arrives to claim his
share of an inheritance. The conflict that develops between the siblings
reflects the larger corruption of greed in modernday society. Boutros contrasts
the traditional beauty and style of life in a Hamah of the past with the city's
contemporary decline.
Wednesday, November 20: 2 and 6:15 pm
Thursday, November 21: 4:15 pm
FERTILE MEMORY / AL-DAKIRA AL-KHASIBAH
Michel Khlefi, Palestina, 1980; 110 minutes
In this acclaimed documentary the lives of three Palestinian women are
examined by intimitely revealing their responses through the cultural and
political struggles on the Westbank. The film offers a vital document on the
challenges of women in a male dominated society.
Wednesday, November 20: 4 and 8:15 pm
THE BLACK MARKET AL-SUQ AL-SAWDA
Kamil al-Telmassani, Egypt, 1946; 120 minutes
A socially radical film, with superb cinematography, showing the breakdown
of social relations in the hara, the neighborhood, during WWII when local
merchants begin to hoard goods to sell on the black market. The story includes
one of the few instances in Egyptian cinema where the people try to solve their
own problems, rather than waiting for an external savior. Black Market was made
in 1944 but was banned until 1946.
Thursday, November 21: 2 and 9 pm
THE TRIUMPH OF YOUTH / INTISAR AL-SHABAB
Ahmed Bedrakhan, Egypt, 1941; 125 minutes
Triumph stars the famous musical singing stars, brother and sister Farid
al-Atrash and Asmahan, in a story that echoes their own life struggles. The two
leave Lebanon for Egypt to seek fame and fortune, but encounter a number of
obstacles to success and love. Both fall for aristocrats, and although things
look bleak, this is a musical, after all, so class can be happily bridged by
true love--and the two singers are able to mount the operetta they had worked
on for so long. As a musical, Triumph reflects the strong post-revolutionary
investment in the "marriage" of different classes, and lends the cloak of
respectability to once-looked-down-upon public performers.
Friday, November 22: 2 and 6:30 pm
NAVIGATORS OF THE DESERT aka SEARCHERS OF THE DESERT / AL-HA'IMUN
Nacer Khemir, Tunisia, 1984; / 95 minutes
A young teacher travels by rickety bus to a small, remote village lost in a
vast sea of Saharan sand. There he witnesses the village men wander aimlessly
off into the desert, as though tranced by some mysterious curse. Through the
eyes of a girl, he is lured into a strange world where fantastic figures
materialize out of wells, while bands of children race through labyrinthine
tunnels. Navigators, like Mogul miniatures, unreels in a spiral pattern, to the
strains of an Andalusian chant; it is like a sand storm that, for an instant,
borrows the shape of a story....
Friday, November 22: 4:30 and 9 pm
Saturday, November 23: 6:15 pm
A TOUCH OF FEAR / SHAY'MIN AL KHAWF
Hussein Kamal, Egypt, 1969; 116 minutes
Shot in the style of a mythic western, Touch tells the story of a gang that
takes over an Egyptian village, terrorizing its inhabitants. Set in the
Egyptian deep south, the film was thought to be a metaphor for the Nasser
regime and was banned by censors until Nasser himself released it for viewing,
saying that if our party is like this gang, then we deserve the fate that
overtakes it in the film!
Saturday, November 23: 4 pm
Sunday, November 24: 8:30 pm
THE EXTRAS / AL-COMPARISS
Nabil al-Maleh, Syria, 1993; 100 minutes
After eight months of brief encounters stolen from the chaos of life and
work, Salem arranges to borrow his friend's apartment in order to have a few
intimate moments with Nada, his beloved. The outside world intrudes again and
again in this powerfully resonant portrait of "extras" in the human crowd
scene, lovers who can't escape urban tensions and inhumanity.
Saturday, November 23: 8:15 pm
Sunday, November 24: 4 pm
THE SIN / AL-HARAM
Henri Barakat, Egypt, 1965; 129 minutes
Featuring Fatin Hamama, queen of Egyptian cinema, The Sin is a moving tale
of injustice about a migrant worker who is raped, then accused of killing her
baby. Set in 1950 before the revolution, this hauntingly photographed film
focusses on a peasant woman's confrontation with abuse and hardship, and
exposes the terrible tension between honor and livelihood, sin and desire, the
forbidden and the permitted.
Sunday, November 24: 6 pm
Wednesday, November 27: 2 and 6:30 pm
LIFE OR DEATH / HAYAT AW MAWT
Kamal al-Sheik, Egypt, 1954; 90 minutes
Considered the masterpiece of Kamal al-Sheik, the Hitchcock of the Egyptian
screen: After a young girl buys medicine for her father, the pharmacist
discovers he has accidently given her poison. In a race against death, city
agencies are mobilized to track the girl down before her father takes the
medicine. Kamal tries here--amidst the genuine suspense--to suggest a positive
symbiosis between citizen and state. Life or Death marks the first extensive
use of location shooting with a rare, realistic look at Cairo in the 50s.
Monday, November 25: 2 and 6:15 pm
THE BAND AND THE BRACELET / AL-SADAH AL-RIJAL
Khairy Bishara, Egypt, 1986; 116 minutes
Bishara's masterpiece traces the lives of four generations of women, in the
village of Karnak in Luxor, from the mid-30s onward. Their hardship and misery
hardly differs from generation to generation. In this formal and unusually
beautiful film, it seems that fate has blocked all chances these women may have
of happiness. A classic adaption of the novel byYahya Tahir Abd Allah.
Monday, November 25: 4 and 8:30 pm
THE FLIGHT / AL-HURUB
Atef al-Tayyib, Egypt, 1991; 125 minutes
Muntasir, a Saidi from the Egyptian countryside, works for an emploment
agencythat for a fee sends Egyptians to work abroad. He finds out that the
whole thing is a scam involving false papers and passports, which cheats the
people who have put their life savings in paying the employment fee. His boss
has him arrested falsely as the one responsible for the scam. Muntasir's escape
to his village in the Said is one of the most outstanding and poetically
charged tributes to the beauty and culture of southern Egypt.
Wednesday, November 27: 4:30 and 9 pm
Sunday, December 1: 3:45 pm
MEN--THE MASTERS / AL-SADAH AL-RIJAL
Ra'fat al-Mihi, Egypt, 1987; 118 minutes
Hachem's impending marriage revive in him memories of his own rape as a
child by the workshop owner where he worked. This overwhelming sense of grief
about the loss of his innocence is aggravated by his own ineffectiveness as he
witnesses the rape of a stream of younnger boys by the same owner. In this
provocative exploration of sexuality, patriarchy, power and resistance, many
taboos are handled with sensitivity.
Thursday, November 28: 4 and 8 pm
Saturday, November 30: 4 pm
AUTUMN QUAIL / AL-SAMMAN WAL-KHARIF
Husam al-Din Mustapha, Egypt, 1967; 90 minutes
Autumn Quail chronicles the rise of an intelligent, ambitious man, an
enthusiastic member of the nationalist movement before the 1952 Revolution.
Unfortunately, he comes to feel estranged from the revolutionary regime, and
his disconnection from his community is reflected in a relationship with a
prostitute, who bears him a child. A film about opportunism, alienation and
marginalization.
Thursday, November 28: 6:15 pm
Saturday, November 30: 2 pm
Sunday, December 1: 2 pm
KNIGHT OF THE CITY / FARIS AL-MADINAH
Muhammad Khan, Egypt, 1992; 115 minutes
A mood piece about alienation in contemporary Cairo: Faris is a money
trader whom makes a bad deal and goes broke. To make things worse, he is deep
in debt. In the one week he has to raise money, we are introduced to the
underbelly of Cairo as Faris makes the rounds to his colleagues, his former
wife, his girlfriend, the old history professor he believed he had run over,
and his son who has become a drug-addict. This is a film loaded with
romanticism about what people were like in one's memory of the past, the ways
they have changed, and how hard it is to live morally--when even the rules of
the street have passed away.
Tuesday, December 3: 2 pm
Wednesday, December 4: 4 pm
PLAYING WITH THE BIG GUYS / AL-LU'UB MA' AL-KIBAR
Sharif Arafa, Egypt, 1991; 125 minutes
A triadic collaboration among star Adel Imam, screenwriter Wahid Hamid and
director Sharif Arafa to produce a contemporary political thriller: Hasan is a
college graduate looking for a job. His best friend Ali works in the central
telephone exchange where he accidently eavesdrops on some powerful officials
and discovers the widespread corruption in the higher echelons of power. He
confides his secret to Hasan who tells an honest cop his "dreams" about
political chicanery. The cop takes action and, after several busts, Hasan and
Ali are revealed as the ones responsible for the arrests, with tragic
consequences.
Tuesday, December 3: 4 pm
Wednesday, December 4: 2, 6:15 and 8:15 pm
OUR HEEDLESS WARS / HURUBINA AL-TA'ISHA
Randa Shahal, Lebanon, 1995; 61 min
A powerful video documentary by Randa Shahal in which she investigates her
own family's participation in the Civil War. Shahal interweaves the specific
history of her family with the larger life of Lebanon itself.
with
COUNTDOWN
Written, edited, and directed by Akram Zaatari; Lebanon, 1995; 6 1/2
minutes
A personal reflection on film and TV, this video travels the globe mixing
footage of real-life war and reel entertainment. Zaatari explores our sense of
real-time transmission and movement through space as we experience them in
televised images of breaking news.
Thursday, December 5, 2 and 6 pm
HAIFA
Rashid Masharawi, Palestine, 1995; 75 minutes
Though he lives in Gaza, his name is Haifa and he dreams of returning to
the city of the same name. He may be the local fool, but he sees and
understands much about the hopes and aspirations of his Gaza relatives: Abu
Said hopes for an improvement in the political situation, since it means the
release of his eldest son from prison. His wife already has her eye on a bride
for the boy. A younger son, cynical and rebellious, believes in nothing, while
their 12-year-old daughter is a romantic, dreaming of the future's largesse.
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