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Special Appearance by filmmaker Amin MatalqaThursday, May 8th, 2008, 7:00pm AMC Metreon 16 Theater 101 4th St. (@ Mission St.) San Francisco $25 General Admission, $15 Students Click to Buy Tickets!
 Captain Abu Raed by Amin Matalqa
(Jordan, 2007, 95 mins)
First Independent Jordanian film - Bay Area Premiere
Winner of the 2008 Sundance - Audience Award in World Cinema
Winner of the 2007 Dubai - Best Actor for Nadim Salwaha
With Jordan as a backdrop, director Amin Matalqa paints a beautiful story of ordinary people overcoming social boundaries to affirm the power of the human spirit to shape destiny. Captain Abu Raed Website
 Amin Matalqa on the set of Captain Abu Raed with young actor Hussein Al-Sous (Top left)
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The Arab Film Festival presents the West Coast Premiere of documentary SLINGSHOT HIP HOP at the Newport Beach Film Festival.
Filmmaker Jackie Reem Salloum will be present for a Q&A after the screening.
SLINGSHOT HIP HOP was selected for the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and as part of the Lincoln Center's New Directors/New Films Series. The film was featured in the March issue of Vibe Magazine.
A new generation slings rhymes instead of rocks as Palestinian rappers form alternative voices of resistance within the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. Interweaving multiple stories of young Palestinians in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank, filmmaker Jackie Reem Salloum spotlights a vibrant hip-hop scene as emerging artists discover rap and employ it as a means to surmount age-old schisms deepened by occupation and poverty. (Sundance Film Festival)
Sunday, April 27th, 2008
4:30pm
Regency Lido Theater
3459 Via Lido
Newport Beach, CA
Tickets available starting April 4th at the Newport Beach Film Festival website.
Slingshot Hip Hop Website
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The Arab Film Festival is proud to co-present at the 51st San Francisco International Film Festival - April 24 to May 8, 2008
The Aquarium directed by Yousry Nasrallah
The Aquarium is a subtle but spirited existential drama of modern life that concentrates—with intimations of a larger political economy of fear—on two secretly troubled thirty something professionals in Cairo whose respectable, self-assured positions belie an unspoken dread of living. Leila and Youssef, the two main characters, although attractive, poised and successful, live with a secret fear of establishing themselves in social relations outside of those created for them at work.
May 3 at 3:30PM, Clay Theatre
May 5 at 3:30PM, Sundance Kabuki Cinemas May 6 at 8:45PM, Sundance Kabuki Cinemas For tickets and information visit www.sffs.org or call 925-866-9559. For more information visit The Aquarium Recycle directed by Mahmoud Al Massad Recycle, directed by Mahmoud Al Massad is a vivid documentary, about the politics, piety and poverty, of Massad’s native city in Jordan, told through the life of husband, father and former mujahadeen soldier-turned–cardboard collector Abu Ammar. Through discussion with neighbors about conditions of world politics, it becomes apparent that Abu is quite an Islamic scholar. However, life becomes more stressful as he tries to reconcile his faith, the needs of his family and his suffocating environment. Recycle screens on May 3 at 1:30PM at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, May 5 at 5:30PM at the Clay Theatre, and May 7 at 6:30PM at the Pacific Film Archive. For tickets and information visit www.sffs.org or call 925-866-9559. For more information visit Recycle
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The Arab Film Festival co-presents with Project Peace Through Understanding and General Union of Palestinian Students:
Selected Short Films from the 2007 Arab Film Festival
Friday, April 18th, 2008, 7:30 PM
Rigoberta Menchu Hall at San Francisco State University
Free Screening
Qater Al Nada by Muayad Alayan
(2007, Palestine, 25 min)
In Beit Safafa, the only remaining Palestinian neighborhood in Israeli West Jerusalem, olive and almond fields are threatened just like the people by the politics of the occupation. The village's Dabka dance group, Qater Al Nada, was established by a group of youth to bring back the Palestinian heritage and culture to the narrow streets, village weddings, and dance festivals, carrying the story of Beit Safafa to Palestine and the world.
 Staying Alive by Zeina Aboulhosn and Anne De Mo
(2006, Lebanon, 8 min)
A sequel to Zeid's Little Bomb, this short film follows the same punk rock band The New Government as they prepare for a concert in Beirut, in July 2006, despite the state of war with Israel.
I Remember Lebanon by Zeina Aboulhosn
2006 | Lebanon/UK | 6 min
A journey through memories of Beirut, filmed by Zeina Aboulhosn who was visiting Lebanon just before the bombs started falling. A chance to meet a new generation of young Lebanese.
 Ashura: Blood and Beauty by Katia Saleh
(2006, Lebanon/UK, 20 min)
Winner of the 2007 Noor Award-Short Film Competition
Following the biggest Shia ceremony in South Lebanon over three years, this contemporary look at the 1300-year-old Ashura Muslim ritual shows that a mix of modernity and tradition in Lebanon has made Ashura a platform for young people to meet each other. This short documentary reveals a side to Ashura that the world has not yet seen, a side that is not bloody and violent but rather ambiguous and compelling.
 Beirut: All Flights Cancelled by Katia Saleh
(2006, Lebanon/UK, 22 min)
Filmed during the last war in Lebanon in July 2006, this personal journey focuses on the state of mind of three different generations who experienced war in the past and who were once again caught under the state of siege. This intimate look at the effects of the war reveals aspects of the conflict seldom shown by war reporters in the media.
 Sour by Nathan Gray
(2007, USA, 50 min)
A group of Israeli and Jordanian skaters jump borders and culture barriers to share a united passion for skateboarding. Shot in neighboring countries Jordan and Israel during the Israel/Lebanon conflict of last year, Sour aims to captures a unique perspective missing from news reports about the region, by putting the camera into the hands of local youth with little or no prior experience in making a film. This very process helps showcase acts of peaceful rebellion, community action, and outreach that unify people who would otherwise never meet.
The total Running Time: 2hours 11min
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The Arab Film Festival co-presents with the Pacific Film Archive:
This series explores the vitality and diversity of documentary and experimental filmmaking in Lebanon and Palestine today. The first two programs take place at the PFA Theater, with additional events presented on the UC Berkeley campus and in San Francisco. On Monday, April 7, the Film Studies Department presents Searching for Our Destination: Films, Politics, Discussion with visiting artists Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri of the 16 Beaver St. Collective. (For more information, see the Film Studies Department)
On Wednesday, April 9, kino21 presents Palestine: Interior/Exterior, a repeat of Kamal Aljafari’s The Roof with additional local work. (For more information, see kino21) Sunday, April 6, 2008
3:30 p.m. Summer of War: Lebanon 2006
Five recent films forcefully articulate personal and collective experiences of the war in Lebanon.
The films in this program are part of a touring exhibition organized by ArteEast. Sunday, April 6, 2008
5:30 p.m. The Roof
Kamal Aljafari in Person. Palestinian director Aljafari’s eloquent exploration of physical and psychic place. With short Visit Iraq.
Series curated by Irina Leimbacher and Jeffrey Skoller. Presented with the generous support of the Al-Falah Grant Program of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the Film Studies Program, Consortium for the Arts, and the Graduate Film Working Group, all at UC Berkeley. We gratefully acknowledge Rasha Salti, Livia Alexander, and ArteEast, as well as the Arab Film Festival, for their assistance.
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The Arab Film Festival co-presents with ATA:
A Summer Not to Forget & Children of ShatilaA.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition Film Series With a report and discussion by Zeina Zaatari, activist with the National Council of Arab American, who traveled to Lebanon during the 2006 war. Thursday, April 3rd, 2008, 7:30 PM, $6Artists' Television Access, 992 Valencia Street, San FranciscoA Summer Not to Forgeta documentary on the 2006 U.S./Israeli war against Lebanon On July 12, 2006, Hezbollah captured 2 Israeli soldiers. For the following 34 days, Lebanon witnessed continuous Israeli bombardment. This documentary takes you beyond the headlines into the harsh realities of war. It explores the devastation of a nation and a people caught under siege. Directed by Carol Mansour, 27min. Children of Shatilaa story of the Palestinian diaspora Many people first became aware of the Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon after the shocking and horrific Sabra-Shatila massacre that took place there in 1982. Located in Beirut's "belt of misery," the camp is home to 15,000 Palestinians and Lebanese who share a common experience of displacement, unemployment and poverty. Fifty years after the exile of their grandparents from Palestine, the children of Shatila attempt to come to terms with the reality of being refugees in a camp that has survived massacre, siege and starvation. Director Mai Masri focuses on two Palestinian children in the camp: Farah, age 11 and Issa, age 12. When these children are given video cameras, the story of the camp evolves from their personal narratives as they articulate the feelings and hopes of their generation. 50min., 1998.
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The Arab Film Festival co-presents with Kino21
Palestine: Exterior / Interior
Wednesday, April 9th, 2008, 8 PM
Artists' Television Access, 992 Valencia Street, San Francisco
Local San Francisco artist James T. Hong presents This Shall be a Sign(2007) and visiting Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafari presents The Roof (2006). While both these works take up the contemporary moment in Palestine/Israel, they do so in radically different ways, both formally and thematically.
Hong's half-hour video is an experimental collage that includes his own observational footage and various media reports of the recent conflict over the reconstruction of an entrance ramp to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem. Representations of this conflict, and some of those other conflicts metonymically and metaphorically associated with it-from land rights to the battle of civilizations to Armageddon-form the core of Hong's larger exploration of how information, beliefs, and truths are manufactured, embellished, circulated. Hong describes the piece as: "an interpretation of the conflict over the reconstruction of a ramp in Jerusalem, of the struggle for sovereignty over a holy site, and of the power of technology as the ubiquitous medium of communication and information in the age of multinational capitalism and the dominion of the English language." Shot while he was briefly in Israel to present an earlier film, This Shall Be a Sign is the work of a consummate outsider who takes us on an outsider's journey where we must navigate the carefully crafted inhuman and all-too-human languages and rhetoric of a mass of competing, conflicting media. (32 mins, in English, Arabic, and Hebrew with English subtitles throughout, color, beta)
Kamal Aljafari's The Roof, on the other hand, is a work literally "from the interior," in other words from and about a Palestinian family that circumstances forced to stay in the area that is now part of the state of Israel. A loosely structured, visually eloquent, and politically understated cinematic essay, The Roof explores physical and psychic senses of place in the context of Aljafari's family history. He returns to and films his parents' and grandmother's homes in Ramleh and Jaffa, now part of Israel, and portrays bits of three generations' lives indelibly marked by the events of 1948. Using elegant cinematography, unhurried rhythms, and fragmented narrative, Aljafari conveys how the region's space, time, history -as well as the forms of individual experience they generate- have been molded by politics and Israeli institutionalized neglect. The roof of Aljafari's title is an absent one, on the unfinished house where his family has lived since their resettlement in 1948, and it functions as a place of waiting marked by constant deferral. Curator Jean-Pierre Rehm has called the film "as much a stylistic as a political manifesto" that "reveals not so much the meaning of an absent roof, but the architecture of identity, place, and present pasts." (61 mins, in Arabic, Hebrew and English with English subtitles, Color, Beta)
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