Fri Sep 4, 7:43 AM

By Cameron French
ADVERTISEMENT

TORONTO (Reuters) – The Toronto International Film Festival is under attack for its decision to present a series of films spotlighting the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, which a group of high-profile artists and celebrities say constitutes complicity in “the Israeli propaganda machine”.

At issue is the festival’s new City to City program, which will present 10 films focused on Tel Aviv.

The 34th edition of the festival will begin next Thursday.

Canadian filmmaker John Greyson last week pulled his documentary “Covered” from the festival in protest, and a statement published online on Thursday and signed by more than 50 artists, academics, and filmmakers likened the program to a celebration of apartheid-era South Africa.

“This program ignores the suffering of thousands of former residents and descendants of the (Tel Aviv) area who currently live in refugee camps in the Occupied Territories or who have been dispersed to other countries,” say the signatories, which include actors Jane Fonda and Danny Glover, author Naomi Klein, and filmmaker Ken Loach.

They accuse the festival of taking direction from the “Brand Israel” campaign, which seeks to improve the country’s image and has focused on Toronto as a test city.

“We do not protest the individual Israeli filmmakers included in City to City, nor do we in any way suggest that Israeli films should be unwelcome at TIFF,” they say.

“However… we object to the use of such an important international festival in staging a propaganda campaign.”

With a diverse multicultural population, including sizable Jewish and Arab groups, Toronto frequently sees public demonstrations of support for both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Earlier this year, the Ontario division of the Canadian Union of Public Employees passed a resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions, while “Israeli Apartheid Week”, founded in Toronto in 2005, is held annually on several Canadian university campuses.

In a blog posting last week, City to City festival programer Cameron Bailey said he was attracted to Tel Aviv because “the films being made there explore and critique the city from many different perspectives”.

He also said the series was conceived independently and was not the object of pressure from any outside source.

Festival director Piers Handling said on Thursday the films speak for themselves and are meant to promote discussion.

“If there are issues that have been raised by these films, that’s exactly what the festival should be about, to show work that’s challenging, work that raises questions, work that’s contemporary, work that deals with today’s issues,” he told Reuters.

Officials at the Israeli consulate in Toronto did not immediately return requests for comment.

The festival will showcase more than 300 films from 64 countries when it begins its 10-day run on September 10.

(Reporting by Cameron French; editing by Peter Galloway)

By Mohamed Elshinnawi
09 September 2009

Tony Shalhoub, star of the hit USA Network series, Tony Shalhoub, star of USA Network’s “Monk,” signs autographs for fans Tony Shalhoub got hooked on acting when he was six years old, and his elder sister volunteered him to play an extra in her high school production of The King and I. His father, who had emigrated to the U.S. from Lebanon as an orphaned young boy, hoped that Tony and his nine siblings would stay in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and work in the family’s grocery business.

From Green Bay to Broadway

But Tony ended up at the prestigious Yale School of Drama, and recalls his acceptance there as a turning point in his professional life. “When I left Yale and graduated and I worked at a theatre, the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that was another kind of turning point,” Shalhoub says. “Now as a working actor, getting paid.”

Shalhoub made his Broadway debut in 1985, in The Odd Couple and was nominated for a 1992 Tony award for his role in Conversations with My Father. But it was his portrayal of Italian cabdriver Antonio Scarpacci in the popular TV sitcom Wings that introduced him to the nation.

“Wings was certainly a great thing that gave me exposure to a larger audience,” he admits, but points out, “I had already done some films at that time and I was continuing to do films during the years of Wings, and I was continuing to go back to New York and to do Broadway plays.”

Although Shalhoub had worked in films and theater, the TV series “Wings” made him a recognized star

Shalhoub is best known today as the obsessive compulsive detective Adrian Monk. The popular TV series, called Monk, is starting its seventh season on the USA Network, and Shalhoub has won several Emmy Awards for his portrayal of the title character.

A versatile actor

On the big screen, he’s played a variety of roles: a lawyer in The Man Who Wasn’t There, a Cuban-American businessman in Primary Colors, a sleazy alien shop owner in the Men in Black films, a former TV star in Galaxy Quest, and an Italian-speaking chef in Big Night.

In the 1998 thriller, The Siege, he finally appeared as an Arab-American: an FBI agent named Frank Haddad. In the film, a terrorist attack on New York City by Islamic militants prompts the U.S. government to declare martial law and round up all young men of Arab descent and put them into internment camps, just as the government did with Japanese Americans following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

“When we did this movie, some people dismissed it as preposterous,” he recalls. He stresses that The Siege was not just a movie about terrorism or explosions. “It was also trying to make the point about what kind of reaction we would have to a horrible incident, in other words, how do we respond as a country.” Shalhoub says the message of the film was “we have to be careful that our country and the Constitution does not begin to unravel in our response.”

Rejecting racial and ethnic stereotypes

Throughout his movie career, spanning over 20 years, Tony Shalhoub has turned down scripts when he felt there were negative or racist overtones in the story line… whether it was toward Native Americans, Jews, or Arabs and Muslims. “I have always tried to avoid those kinds of things and if there was a role that seemed to have those kinds of elements in it, I try to put a different spin on it.”

Out of that conviction, Shalhoub, along with the Network of Arab-American Professionals, established The Arab-American Filmmaker Award Competition in 2005. The goal of the contest is to allow young Arab-Americans to write their own screenplays, trying to change the prevalent negative stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims presented on film.

Helping Arab-Americans tell their own stories

Shalhoub feels strongly that Arab Americans must produce movies that tell the real story of their heritage and showcase the human face of Arab-American families and their values… dramatically showing that they are not so different from their fellow citizens.

In “AmericanEast,” Shalhoub plays the main character’s Jewish friend
“I have always wanted to help and give support there, because these are stories that need to be told,” he says. “We are kind of like ‘the unheard-from minority,’ especially after 9/11. There was a large effort on the part of these people to get their work out there before 9/11, and since 9/11, it is a whole ‘nother chapter.”

Shalhoub appeared in the post-9/11 drama AmericanEast, about an Arab-American family living in Los Angeles. The film was produced by Arab and Muslim American companies, with Shalhoub serving as executive producer. He plans to continue his support for Arab-Americans in the film industry, making sure that their stories are be

By Mike Collett-White
September 10, 2009

VENICE (Reuters) – For Omar Sharif, the future and the past are useless. The only thing that counts for the Egyptian actor is the present.

“I think that thinking about the future is something for young people, and thinking about the past is useless when you are old,” Sharif told reporters in Venice, where his latest movie “The Traveler” is in competition at the film festival. “In life I have already wiped out everything that has already gone,” he said through an interpreter, switching languages with each question. The translator gave his age as 78, although online biographies and his Myspace page say he is 77.

“Every moment is like that for me now and that is how it should be. To live well at my age you always have to think about concentrating your attention on the moment that is now and the moment you are living because you don’t know how much longer you may live.”

Sharif plays the old Hassan in Ahmed Maher’s debut feature film The Traveler (El Mosafer), which follows Hassan on three pivotal days in his life — the first in 1948, the second in 1973 and the third in 2001.

The story explores time and the past, as an elderly Hassan seeks to reconnect with his own personal history through the young Ali who he is convinced is his grandson.

THE ONLY ARAB

Despite becoming a major Hollywood star, appearing in classics like “Lawrence of Arabia” in 1962 and “Doctor Zhivago” three years later, Sharif recalled how his early days in the U.S. movie business were not easy.

Being the “only Arab” working in Hollywood, “I had to be very careful what I did.

“For example, Columbia Pictures signed a five-year contract with me when I had made Lawrence of Arabia but they didn’t pay me anything,” he said.

“When I made Doctor Zhivago they sold me to MGM for $15,000. I made the film for $15,000. My American lawyer said ‘I can sue them’, and I said no, leave it, I don’t want them to think of me as someone who only wants money.

AFP
Mon Sep 14, 3:14 pm ET

TORONTO (AFP) – Egyptian filmmakers led by pioneer Yousry Nasrallah are winning over international audiences for the first time at the Toronto film festival this year, organizers said.

“Egypt has always had a strong domestic industry,” festival co-director Cameron Bailey told AFP. “But (its filmmakers) had a hard time breaking out internationally.

“A new generation of young filmmakers is now making films that work both inside Egypt and beyond,” he said.

This year several films from Egypt are showing at the festival in a new trend.

“Normally we have one film at the festival from Egypt at most,” Bailey said, pointing to first-time feature directors Ahmad Abdall’s “Heliopolis” and Ahmed Maher’s “The Traveller” as examples.

Canadian director Ruba Nadda meanwhile has set “Cairo Time,” starring Alexander Siddig in the Egyptian capital.

“Egypt is having a really strong year, asking tough questions of their society, really digging deep about what’s going on there and telling good stories,” Bailey said.

He also highlighted the work of Cairo-born pioneering filmmaker Yousry Nasrallah, whose latest film “Scheherazade, Tell me a Story” about the lives of three women constrained by social norms, is also showing here.

Nasrallah “is the senior member of this current crop and his films have done well at film festivals (worldwide),” he said.

“Others who have followed in his footsteps are making films with high artistic ambitions, yet are accessible, more along the lines of European art films.”

As a result, “there’s more than the usual melodrama of Egyptian commercial cinema to see this year.”

Saleh Bakri, the 30 year-old actor who won the Ofir Prize (Israeli Oscar) for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Khaled, the jazz and skirt enthusiast, in The Band’s Visit, has been chosen sexiest man of the year by Motek (”Sweety”), an Israeli woman’s magazine that targets 20-something urban college graduates.

The Motek announcement came about one month after Time Out Tel Aviv published a lengthy interview with the actor (page 38), who recently played Hamlet (in Hebrew) at Tel Aviv’s Tmuna Theater. You can see Bakri in this clip from The Band’s Visit, courtesy of YouTube, where you can also watch the trailer.

Here’s the Motek cover, with the words “Ya Habibi!” (or, as far too many Israelis pronounce it, “Ya Khabeebee”) plastered across his chest.

****

Nisreen Faour as Muna and Melkar Muallem as Fadi in “Amreeka,” directed by Cherien Dabis.

“Amreeka,” which is set in 2003 at the outset of the American-led invasion of Iraq, is inspired by the experiences of Ms. Dabis, a Palestinian-Jordanian who grew up in Ohio and in Jordan and whose parents immigrated to the United States just before she was born. During the Persian Gulf war, she recalls in the production notes, her family faced the same kinds of persecution and ostracism that Muna and her sister’s family, the Halabys, suffer as the invasion continues.

The early scenes in the West Bank show Muna stoically enduring the daily humiliation of having to pass through two Israeli checkpoints on her grueling commute from Bethlehem to work in a bank. For all the hardships of life in the West Bank, in coming to America, she is forsaking a relatively comfortable existence to venture into the unknown with her 16-year-old son, Fadi (Melkar Muallem).

At the Chicago airport, where they are detained for three hours, mother and son endure the same sort of hostile interrogation they received at West Bank checkpoints. After finally passing through immigration, they are met by Muna’s severe sister, Raghda Halaby (Hiam Abbass), and her family, who live in a semi-rural suburb.

Raghda, who left the West Bank 15 years earlier but is still profoundly homesick, is married to a successful Palestinian doctor, Nabeel (Yussef Abu Warda). The couple have three daughters, the oldest of whom, Salma (Alia Shawkat), is Fadi’s age and becomes his guide to the treacherous jungle of American high school life. Horrified at Fadi’s pleated trousers, because they make him look “F.O.B.” (“fresh off the boat,” she explains), she supervises his wardrobe for his first day of school, and the two become fellow rebels from the social mainstream.

Muna’s first major setback is her discovery while unpacking that the sealed tin of cookies in which she had stashed all her money is missing, having been confiscated by the immigration authorities, along with the other food she had brought. Deeply ashamed, she is too proud to tell her sister.

Unlike other recent films about immigration, “Amreeka” maintains the buoyant mood of a serious sitcom. As Muna and Fadi confront hostility and prejudice, their misadventures, some of which augur disaster, are resolved without too much grief. The movie is peppered with little jokes. Scrutinizing the cover of a supermarket tabloid, Muna asks, “What does adopting an orangutan love child mean?” A roadside sign with missing letters advises, “Support our oops.”

The film’s upbeat tone reflects the resilience and sunny temperament of Muna, who as embodied by Ms. Faour is the kind of warm, lovable woman you want to hug. Desperate for work and unable to find it at a local bank, Muna takes a job at a White Castle next door but pretends to her family that the bank is her workplace.

At school, Fadi encounters ethnic slurs and bullying, and in the most serious incident is arrested after retaliating. At the same time, rising anti-Arab sentiment decimates Nabeel’s medical practice and strains the Halabys’ marriage. As his practice evaporates, Ms. Abbass, the great Palestinian actress who also appeared in “The Visitor,” imbues Raghda with a heavy weight of sorrow and anxiety.

Through it all, Muna perseveres. For every hostile person she encounters, there is a good Samaritan. Her co-workers at White Castle are understanding when she makes mistakes. Her most helpful ally is Mr. Novatski (Joseph Ziegler), the divorced Polish-Jewish principal at Fadi’s school, who comes to his rescue at a crucial turning point.

If, at moments, the film’s positive outlook verges on naïveté, it never strays over separating the possible from the preposterous. “Amreeka” believes in people, and its faith rubs off on you.

“Amreeka” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It includes some strong language.

AMREEKA

Opens on Friday in New York and Los Angeles.

Written and directed by Cherien Dabis; director of photography, Tobias Datum; edited by Keith Reamer; music by Kareem Roustom; production designer, Aidan Leroux; produced by Christina Piovesan and Paul Barkin; released by National Geographic Entertainment. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes.

WITH: Nisreen Faour (Muna Farah), Melkar Muallem (Fadi Farah), Hiam Abbass (Raghda Halaby), Alia Shawkat (Salma Halaby), Yussef Abu Warda (Nabeel Halaby) and Joseph Ziegler (Mr. Novatski).

The Arab Film Festival Presents

By BRIAN STELTER
New York Times
Published: August 30, 2009

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — When the heiress Paris Hilton traveled here in June and July to audition female friends for her show “My New BFF,” her producers had access to state-of-the-art studios and a government eager to import a touch of Hollywood glamour to the Middle East.

But to adhere to the region’s Islamic norms, many of the ingredients in reality TV were taboo: there would be no drinking, no cursing, no dramatic displays of affection. The producers thought about filming a scene at a water park, but passed on the option of dressing the contestants in religiously appropriate swimwear.

Dubai, its rival Abu Dhabi and other Persian Gulf cities face enormous hurdles as they try to diversify their economies by fostering creativity and becoming entertainment capitals. Chief among those hurdles: they operate under Islamic law. Hollywood does not. So far, the oil-rich countries have proved more able to pay for fancy media productions and to build expensive film facilities than to actually lure production to the Middle East, as economic efforts run up against their traditional values and censorship.

This month Dubai rejected the producers of the “Sex and the City” sequel, who wanted to set part of the film there. The government cited moral reasons for the decision. “Body of Lies,” a thriller about fighting terrorists, was turned down in 2007. For now, some of the region’s specially constructed studio lots lie mostly vacant, visitors say.

Michael Hirschorn, an executive producer of the Hilton series, left Dubai impressed by what he called a “media community truly eager to embrace the international marketplace.” But that community, he said, has been hampered “by cultural norms and standards that make a lot of international production difficult to impossible to pull off.”

Some of the other hurdles are logistical. For instance, local requirements for full-time work visas mean that the country lacks a robust freelance market to support productions. Jamal al-Sharif, the executive director of Dubai Studio City, which was founded in 2005 to stimulate the regional film industry, acknowledged that “a vital ingredient for building the film industry is access to talent.”

Despite the drawbacks, the region’s ambitions to house world-class centers for creation and production cannot be written off, partly because of the sheer sums proponents are willing to spend. Last fall, Imagenation, a subsidiary of the government-run Abu Dhabi Media Company, invested $250 million each with Participant Media and Hyde Park Entertainment and $100 million with National Geographic Entertainment to finance feature films. Work on the first phase of Abu Dhabi’s own media production zone, one geared toward television, is under way.

Abu Dhabi’s most expensive joint venture to date is a two-year-old one with Warner Brothers that was said to be worth $1 billion. This month, “Shorts,” the first Warner Brothers film financed partly by Abu Dhabi’s feature film arm, opened in theaters in the United States. It earned a disappointing $6.6 million in its opening weekend.

So far, “Shorts” is the only film to come from the joint venture: the partners have not announced any more films, feeding speculation that the authorities in Abu Dhabi are rethinking their Hollywood ambitions. But Edward Borgerding, the chief executive of Imagenation, said in an interview that he was sure “we’ll make another movie with Warner Brothers next year, and the year after that.”

In a statement that cited the “world economic climate,” Warner Brothers was more circumspect. It said it was working with Imagenation to ensure that the companies’ business objectives were mutually aligned.

National Geographic is making more progress with Abu Dhabi. Adam Leipzig, the president of its entertainment division, said the partners plan to make two or three films a year for the next five years. Their first acquisition, “Amreeka,” is scheduled for release in New York and Los Angeles on Sept. 4, and their first co-production, “The Way Back,” finished filming two months ago. The partnership expects to make more acquisitions at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.

The investments by Abu Dhabi are part of a wider push to establish the emirate as a cultural center. Like other Middle Eastern cities, the emirate has invested money and personnel in creating the infrastructure for media production. One year ago it announced a content creation center, which it dubbed Twofour54, and in September its first editing centers and studios will open on the outskirts of the city, said Christopher O’Hearn, the general manager of DMA Media, a consultancy that helped create the hub.

Holding a notepad while meeting in a hotel lobby in Abu Dhabi, Mr. O’Hearn sketched out a grander vision for a production center, now in the early planning stages. “It’ll be the sort of facility that a producer from London, L.A. or Sydney can walk into and say, ‘This is very familiar,’ ” he said.

But to carry out the production plans, Mr. O’Hearn and others say, the region needs a skilled pool of creative workers.

In an interview, Mr. Borgerding said that a skilled labor force “doesn’t exist here in sufficient numbers yet to put the productions together without flying in a lot of people and putting them in expensive hotels.”

A new training academy is working to change that.

Back in Dubai, Tim Smythe, the chief executive of Filmworks, said the tax-free emirates also lack “incentive packages or rebates” for producers, so the only advantages are the locations.

Dubai Studio City’s facilities have been used in 26 feature films, mostly from gulf countries and Bollywood. To date, “Syriana” and “The Kingdom” are the only Western films to be partly shot in the emirates.

While expressing confidence in Dubai Studio City’s objectives, Mr. Sharif said, “We do realize it may take a while for us to really make a mark at the global level.”

In rejecting the request from the producers of the “Sex and the City” sequel this summer, Mr. Sharif said, the authorities took into account “the multicultural fabric of the society and its perceptions.”

According to a government official familiar with the script, its plot lines — with the women coming to Dubai, spending money lavishly and cavorting — were perceived to reinforce negative stereotypes about the region.

Even more than the staff issues, enduring issues of censorship may be the most stubborn hurdle for the gulf region — even if, as Mr. Hirschorn jokingly said, “our government censor turned out to be a really nice guy.”