Arab Film Festival and kino21 present

Tuesday, October 28th
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission (at Third St)
San Francisco

Environs of Seeing: 2 shows

 Experimental Documentaries from Lebanon, Syria and Iraq
 program curated by Peter Limbrick

(Posthumous)

6:30pm Program 1: In the Real of the Senses: from Lebanon

Nights and Days by Lamia Joreige, 2007, 17 min.
A cinematic counterpart to the modernist paintings of exiled Iraqi artist, Mahmoud Sabri, who lives and works in Prague.

(Posthumous) by Ghassan Salhab, 2007, 28 min.
After the immediacy of the moment explored in so many films made during July 2006, (Posthumous) asks what happens when the bombs stop falling: how can one represent death's aftermath? This film-essay reflects on the conditions of its own possibility as it tries to survey the newly bombed remains of Beirut's suburbs.

Merely a Smell  by Maher Abi Samra, 2008, 11 min.
In its haunting sequence of just a few shots, Merely a Smell stunningly evokes the assault on the senses brought by the war, as relief workers move the bodies of the dead.

Roundabout Shatila by Maher Abi Samra, 2005, 50 min.
Shot within the confines of the Shatila refugee camp in Beirut, Maher Abi Samra's long takes linger on the decrepit lwals and over-built spaces of the camp as the film follows its residents' movements and, occasionally, their stories. With stunning use of sound and image, the film relates the texture of life in permanent exile.

9:00pm Program 2: Immediacy of Place: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon

Against the Light by Koutaiba al Janabi UK/Czech Republic, 2007, 15 min.
A cinematic counterpart to the modernist paintings of exiled Iraqi artist, Mahmoud Sabri, who lives and works in Prague.

Waiting for the Day by Meyar Al-Roumi, Syria/France, 2003, 50 min.
Al Roumi captures a cross-section of the contemporary arts scene in Damascus as he interviews visual artists and musicians whose work tries to find an authentic voice of creativity and dissent. The film chronicles Syrian artists' drive for independent cultural expression in an environment tightly regulated and controlled by the state.

Refugees for Life by Hady Zaccak, UAE/Lebanon, 2008, 48 min.
As much an exploration of place as people, the film reveals the continued destitution of Palestinian life inside the UNRWA refugee camps of South Lebanon. Traveling from Tyre to Germany and back, the film reveals, in striking black and white cinematography punctuated with archival footage and dramatized sequences, the distorted dreams and hopes of several generations of refugees.