CineSource Magazine Features the Arab Film Festival
Arab Film Festival Reveals Surprising New Stories
by Roger Rose
The 12th Arab Film Festival opens at the Castro Theatre this month, offering Arab storytelling and cinematography to a widespread audience: San Francisco, Berkeley, San Jose, and Los Angeles. From October 16 through 28, the festival will present the innovative programming vision of AFF Artistic Director Sonia El Feki, who sought out new film productions throughout the Middle East and North Africa, in concert with the selection committee. A passionate El Feki says, “This is an exciting moment to witness a renaissance in Arab filmmaking.” El Feki’s artistic ideas take form under the administrative guidance of new Executive Director Michel Shehadeh, who joined the AFF in February of this year. The pair worked together to develop new ways to reveal to American audiences fresh trends in Arab film. The contributions of 15 countries deliver a number of international film firsts, notably Jordan’s Foreign Language Oscar bid with its first-ever locally-made feature film, Captain Abu Raed (directed by Amin Matalqa). Also included are the first feature films ever to come out of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Bahrain. Also screening will be Amina, a potent documentary by Yemen’s first woman filmmaker, the fascinating Khadija Al-Salami. Shehadeh, a Palestinian, mused about a cultural expansion he feels with his day-to-day work at the AFF office. “I’m learning about the Maghreb, Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco, for example, through their films. It’s a whole new world for me in North Africa.” This year, El Feki and her program committee were able to shine a light on the work of Maghrebi films and directors, beginning with festival opener, Waiting For Pasolini, winner of the 31st Cairo International Film Festival. Directed by Morocco’s Daoud Oulad Syad, the film tells the story of Thami, a movie extra who becomes a friend of Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini during the shooting of an early film in Thami’s village.
Shehadeh spoke without hesitation: “We want to portray the new narratives that help break down the old, one-dimensional, very na•ve and very stereotypical way of portraying Arabs. So the new narratives are not just for the Western audience, but also for the Arab community here, which is learning about its different personalities.”
