Fedayin: The Struggle of Georges Abdallah (Vacarmes, 2020)

By: börek - December 2nd, 2023  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 3rd December 2023, Movie night – Fedayin: The Struggle of Georges Abdallah (Vacarmes, 2020). 81 min. Documentary with English subtitles. Doors open at 20:00, intro & film start at 20:30.

Fedayin: The Struggle of Georges Abdallah traces the course of an indefatigable Arab Communist and fighter for Palestine. From the Palestinian refugee camps that shaped his conscience to international mobilizations for his release, we will explore the situation of one of the longest-held political prisoners in Europe.

Synopsis: For over 35 years, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah has been imprisoned. A Lebanese communist engaged in resistance alongside Palestinian fighters, he has been imprisoned by the French judicial system and successive governments since 1984. Beyond the judicial harassment to which he has been subjected, this documentary film will trace the political course of Georges Abdallah and seeks to show how his ideas and struggle are still vital and necessary.

This film about the critically important case of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah includes interviews with Samidoun international coordinator Charlotte Kates, Samidoun Europe coordinator Mohammed Khatib, Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat coordinator Khaled Barakat and many others, including Robert and Maurice Abdallah (Georges’ brothers), Jean-Louis Chalanset (Georges’ lawyer), Suzanne le Manceau (co-founder of the Collectif pour la Libération de Georges Ibrahim Abdallah (CLGIA)), Bertrand Sassoye (former political prisoner) and Jean-Marc Rouillan (former political prisoner).

The film takes us to Lebanon, to the Palestinian refugee camps, where he forged himself politically. We follow his engagement in the Palestinian resistance and against the Israeli occupation with the FARL (Lebanese Revolutionary Armed Fractions), a commitment that will take him to France in the 1980s, where he will be sentenced for complicity in murder. Through a series of interviews (in France, Lebanon, Belgium and Germany), we go to meet his family, his lawyer, his supporters, his friends and people who have rubbed shoulders with him. With them, we trace a life of resistance to imperialism and Zionist occupation.

Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Free entrance. You want to screen a movie, let us know: joe [at] lists [dot] squat [dot] net

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Lebanese movie night: The Ugly One (Eric Baudelaire, 2013)

By: börek - February 5th, 2023  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 19 February 2023, Lebanese movie night: The Ugly One by Eric Baudelaire (and Adachi Masao) * 2013 * 100 minutes * In multiple languages * subtitles in English. Doors open at 20:00, film starts at 20:30
Set in the Beirut of the 2010s, this movie follows two fictional paths to arrive at an intimately personal documentary. Baudelaire’s characters, or rather his ensembles of characters, are people whose history is intimately entangled with revolutionary movements. In this film, with the help of Adachi Masao he sketches a kind of brotherhood between two countries with intense political histories: Japan and Lebanon. It’s an entanglement that might seem unlikely. But that only makes it more poetic, it doesn’t make it any less real.

The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi and 27 Years Without Images was in 2012 the first UK solo exhibition by French artist Eric Baudelaire whose work looks at the complexities of recounting the history of the Japanese Red Army (JRA), a radical group that emerged from the 1968 Tokyo student movement, settled in Beirut in the early 1970s, and engaged in sophisticated terrorist activities in solidarity with the Palestinian cause. As a filmmaker, Adachi devoted his life to images. During his years in Lebanon, he sought to advance his radical film practice by trading the camera for the rifle.

Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Free entrance. You want to screen a movie, let us know: joe [at] lists [dot] squat [dot] net

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Lebanese movie night: Capernaum (Nadine Labaki, 2018)

By: börek - January 9th, 2023  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 29 January 2023, Lebanese movie night: Capernaum (Nadine Labaki, 2018), 126 minutes, in Arabic with English subtitles. Doors open at 20:00, film starts at 20:30.

Zain, a 12-year-old, living in the slums of Beirut ends up in the Roumieh Prison after a stabbing. Capernaum is told in flashback format, focusing on Zain’s life, including his encounter with an Ethiopian immigrant Rahil and her infant son Yonas, and leading up to his attempt to sue his parents for child neglect, “for giving him life in such a chaotic world. He’s actually not only suing his parents, he’s suing the whole system because his parents are also victims of that system — one that is failing on so many levels and that completely ends up excluding people” according Labaki.
Like her past movies, Capernaum features a cast of mostly nonprofessional actors, and tackles societal ills. Capernaum is fiction, but its portrayal of Lebanon’s rampant poverty and treatment of undocumented populations is very realistic. “Capernaum is a biblical village that was doomed by Jesus. Later on, the word started being used to signify chaos.”
“Some critics are very cynical of the film and say this is not really happening because they don’t see it around them… All I can tell them is: “Get real. Get out of your cafe where you’re writing your critique and go out into the world and see what’s happening around you.” What you see in the film is nothing compared to reality. We should wake up to how many children are suffering in the world. It’s unbearable suffering; I didn’t put rape scenes in the film, I didn’t put real abuse in the film — because I couldn’t.”

Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Free entrance. You want to screen a movie, let us know: joe [at] lists [dot] squat [dot] net

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Letter from a Time of Exile (Borhane Alaouié, 1988) – The Chair (Cynthia Choucair, 2002)

By: börek - October 7th, 2021  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 10 October 2021, Lebanese movie night: Letter from a Time of Exile (Borhane Alaouié, 1988, 52 minutes) – The Chair (لغة فرنسية) (Cynthia Choucair, 2002, 21 minutes). Both films in arabic with english subtitles. Free admission. Doors open at 20:00, Film starts at 20:30

In Letter from a Time of Exile, Borhane Alaouié presents the stories of four exiles from Beirut. Their only connection is the voice of the narrator and their situation of living in exile in Europe. Told with a subtle humor, the film sketches four highly individual portraits of people, whose lives have taken unexpected turns due to the madness of the Civil War.
Borhane Alaouié, Lebanese film director from South Lebanon, died in September 2021 in Brussels. He was 80 years old. He shot his first feature film Kafr Kassem in 1974, his work was immediately recognized internationally as one of the best Arab films of the year.
Director Hady Zaccack remembers: “Borhane Alaouié was a spiritual father for me and for Lebanese cinema, this new cinema which was born in 1975. The filmmaker was the most loved of a group of filmmakers like Maroun Baghdadi, Jocelyne Saab, Jean Chamoun, Randa Chahhal… who have transformed the country’s cinematographic landscape. Its disappearance coincides with the disappearance of a modern, secular vision of a new Lebanon, far from confessionalism. His cinema, which deals in particular with social problems, exile and return, was a pan-Arab cinema with Beirut as the center of his stories, but also Egypt (It is not enough that God is with the poor, 1978). Borhane Alaouié was my teacher, the one who paved my way by telling me one day: “You have to choose between being a critic or a filmmaker.” So he pushed me to make films and see them as a critic. I owe him a lot since the day he supervised my thesis film. It was a film school in itself. His departure marks the end of an era that is withering forever… tragically.”

The Chair (لغة فرنسية) by Lebanese filmmaker Cynthia Choucair (2002, 21 minutes).

While playing Basketball, 12-year-old Nader and 8-year-old Samer rip the chair of their dead brother. Fearing their mother’s anger, they throw it in the bin. Wallowing in a sense of guilt, the two brothers go out to retrieve it, but unfortunately the chair is no longer there.
Cynthia Choucair graduated from the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts (University of Balamand) in 1998 and holds a Master’s degree in cinema from IESAV, Saint Joseph University, Beirut. In 2007 she founded her production house “Road 2 Films”.
In 2012, her documentary “Powerless” addresses the issue of Lebanon’s electricity crisis through the testimonies of Jamal and others whose lives have been greatly affected by the persistent electricity shortage in their country.
Her documentary “Counting Tiles” was premiered in 2018 with a group of clowns who set off for the island of Lesbos to deliver laughter to refugees. These clowns are member of Clown Me In, a Beirut-based group that performs for young Syrian refugees: the children of a new generation of war.

Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Free entrance. You want to screen a movie, let us know: joe [at] lists [dot] squat [dot] net

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Documentary: Children of the Revolution (2010)

By: börek - March 1st, 2015  Filed under: Filmavond

children_of_the_revolutionSunday March 1st 2015. Documentary: Children of the Revolution (2010) by Shane O’Sullivan (Ireland, England, Germany, 2010, 92 minutes). In English. Door opens at 8pm, film begins at 9pm. Free admission.

Shane O’Sullivan’s documentary about Ulrike Meinhof and Fusako Shigenobu, leaders of the German Red Army Faction and the Japanese Red Army weaves their lives together through the testomy of their daughters authors and journalists Bettina Röhl and Mei Shigenobu. A portrait of late-60s radicalism told from an unusual perspective. With capitalism once more in crisis, they reflect on their mother’s actions as the film asks: what were they fighting for and what have we learned?
http://www.childrenoftherevolution.co.uk/

[…Lees verder]

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Movie Night: Incendies (2010)

By: börek - January 1st, 2015  Filed under: Filmavond

IncendiesSunday January 4th 2015, Movie Night: Incendies (Scorched) by Denis Villeneuve (130 minutes, 2010). In Arabic and French, with English subtitles. Door opens at 8pm, film begins at 9pm.

People who have lived through noteworthy experiences – fascinating or tragic – have always inspired writers and filmmakers. Soha Bechara is one such figure. A militant with the communist resistance to the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon, Bechara was imprisoned without trial when she was 21 for trying to assassinate Antoine Lahad, the leader of the Israel-backed South Lebanon Army. She spent 10 years in Khiam prison, six of them in solitary confinement.
Bechara’s story has captured the imagination of Lebanese filmmakers and since her release from Khiam in 1998, she has appeared in a number of documentary studies. Now, in the wake of these artful documentaries, the first of the fiction films has come: “Incendies”. Villeneuve’s film is based on the play of the same name by Lebanese-Canadian playwright Wajdi Mouawad. The plot of “Incendies” revolves around the character of political activist Nawal Marwan, who lived through a harrowing detention before leaving her fictional home country for a life of exile in Canada. Her story is loosely inspired by Bechara’s own experiences. […Lees verder]

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Movie night: Waltz with Bashir (2008)

By: börek - August 1st, 2013  Filed under: Filmavond
Waltz_with_Bashir

Sunday August 18th 2013, Movie night: Waltz with Bashir (Ari Folman, Israel, 2008, 86 minutes, English subtitles). Door opens at 20:00, film begins at 21:00

‘Waltz with Bashir” is a devastating animated film that tries to reconstruct how and why thousands of innocent civilians were massacred because those with the power to stop them took no action. Why they did not act is hard to say. Did they not see? Not realize? Not draw fateful conclusions? In any event, at the film’s end, the animation gives way to newsreel footage of the dead, whose death is inescapable. […Lees verder]

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Filmavond: West Beirut

By: börek - February 24th, 2012  Filed under: Events, Filmavond

Zo./Su. 18 maart 2012: Film night, 20uur: West Beirut (Ziad Doueiri, Lebanon, 1998, 105′). English subtitles.

In April 1975, civil war breaks out; Beirut is partitioned along a Muslim-Christian line and is divided into East and West Beirut. Tarek is in high school, making Super 8 movies with his friend, Omar. At first the war is a lark: school has closed, the violence is fascinating, getting from West to East is a game. His mother wants to leave; his father refuses. Tarek spends time with May, a Christian, orphaned and living in his building. By accident, Tarek goes to an infamous brothel in the war-torn Olive Quarter, meeting its legendary madam, Oum Walid. He then takes Omar and May there. Family tensions rise. As he comes of age, the war moves inexorably from adventure to tragedy.

Film night at Joe’s Garage, nice, warm and cozy cinema! Doors open at 20:00, film starts at 20:15, free entrance. You want to play a movie, let us know: joe [at] squat [dot] net

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