The Arab Film Festival Presents

Pomegranates and Myrr by Najwa Najjar

Eye of the Sun

The Arab Film Festival & National Geographic Entertainment
PRESENT

AMREEKA
A film by Cherien Dabis
Q&A after the film with Writer and Director Cherien Dabis

Amreeka chronicles the adventures of Muna, a single mother who leaves the Israeli occupied Palestinian West Bank with Fadi, her teenage son, with dreams of an exciting future in the promised land of small town Illinois. Told with heartfelt humor by writer-director Cherien Dabis in her feature film debut, Amreeka is a universal journey into the lives of a Palestinian family of immigrants and first-generation teenagers caught between their heritage and the new world in which they now live and the bittersweet search for a place to call home.

Amreeka recalls Dabis’s Palestinian family’s memories of their lives in rural America during the first Iraq War. The film stars Haifa-trained actress Nisreen Faour as Muna, and Melkar Muallen plays her 16-year-old son, Fadi. Also in the cast are Hiam Abbass (The Visitor, Paradise Now), Alia Shawkat (“Arrested Development”), Yussef Abu-Warda and Joseph Ziegler.

Be sure to buy tickets early! Seating is limited and we recommend you purchase your tickets online.

Purchase Tickets Now

Thursday, August 27th @ 7pm
Embarcadero Center Cinema
One Embarcadero Center Cinema, Promenade Level
San Francisco

$20 General / $15 Students

Free four-hour validated parking is available after 5 PM Monday-Friday and after 10 AM Saturday & Sunday at any Embarcadero Center Parking Garage. With validation, reduced rates apply at all other times.

Co-Presented by The Jewish Film Festival and the San Francisco Film Society

“Amreeka” opens in theaters in SF on September 18th

Opening Night Film: Waiting for Pasolini by Daoud Aoulad-Syad

Following the Awards ceremony, AFF presents the Bay Area premiere of Waiting for Pasolini, the latest feature by Moroccan director Daoud Aoulad-Syad.

Thursday, October 16th, 2008
Castro Theater, San Francisco
6:00pm Reception (by invitation only)
8:00pm Awards Ceremony and Opening Film Waiting for Pasolini

Noor Awards on Opening Night

Join us for a very special evening at the historic Castro Theater for the 2nd annual Noor Awards Ceremony to take place Opening Night, October 16th 2008.
All nominated competition films will be judged by our distinguished local jury members. As part of the Noor Award, a cash prize to the director of the winning film will be given as follows:
Best Long Fiction 2000 USD
Best Long Non-Fiction 2000 USD
Best Short Fiction 500 USD
Best Short Non-Fiction 500 USD

The Arab Film Festival will also present a Life Achievement Award honoring the work, talent, and creativity of the late Egyptian film director Youssef Chahine.

Sept 25th co-presentation of KINO21 with ARAB FILM FESTIVAL

HOW WE FIGHT: CONSCRIPTS, MERCENARIES, TERRORISTS, AND PEACEKEEPERS

This series presents international documentaries that explore soldiering and depict the experience of war from the point of view of those on the ground. From Argentina, Russia, Iraq, Germany, France, Holland and the U.S., several of these films are US premieres. On Thursday, September 25 we begin with Iraqi Short Films, a brand new compilation of videos shot in battle by soldiers and militia members in Iraq. Subsequent programs include video diaries of the battlefield and pre- or post-combat rumination, extended observational portraits and interview-based works. There are depictions of Russian conscripts in Chechnya, PKK rebels in the mountains of Iraq, American veterans returned from Vietnam, and mercenaries and peacekeepers stationed across the globe, from Bosnia to Rwanda, from the Middle East to the USA.
All screenings take place at ATA, 992 Valencia Street on Thursday or Sunday evenings at 8 pm.
Please see below or go to www.kino21.org for program descriptions.

How We Fight: Conscripts, Mercenaries, Terrorists and generous support of the Potrero Nuevo Fund of the Tides Foundation, the LEF Foundation, the Arab Film Festival and Goethe Institut San Francisco.

“Methodological, well-targeted propaganda or unbridled outbursts, these images, in their own myopic, implacable, rough ways, relate the conflict. [...]The daily life of a warrior captured in the harsh brutality of a visor made into a lens, without the relief of a counter shot.”-Jean-Pierre Rehm, FID Marseille

Kino21′s series “How We Fight: Conscripts, Mercenaries, Terrorists and Peacekeepers” begins with Iraqi Short Films by Argentine director Mauro Andrizzi, a compilation of short videos shot in the midst of war, whether by US or British soldiers, Iraqi militia members, or corporate workers. These are not “films” per se. They are a mix of slices of life recorded on video (many shot while firing on the enemy or being fired upon), pithy propaganda pieces, and soldiers’ visions of war as music video. They are crudely shot fragments, some rife with raw fear, some gloating over momentary victory. Filmed mainly as records, for friends, family, or fellow fighters, and at one point or another put on the web or on local television, the pieces were culled by Andrizzi over several months. Ranging from the banal to the intense, from the shocking to the darkly humorous, Andrizzi’s compilation depicts war as experienced, articulated, and vividly imagined by those actually fighting and dying in it. His addition of a handful of texts, from Mark Twain to C. Wright Mills to Dick Cheney, and sporadic manipulation of a few images suggests a bleak vision of this war’s inexorable chaos and horror. But it is a vision that combines the responsibility to LOOK with critical empathy, analysis, and the desire to comprehend some of its impact.

The Arab Film Festival co-presents with Golden Thread Productions:

A Comedy by Yussef El Guindi

A theatre actor of Middle Eastern descent considers the leap to film stardom when his agent secures a role for him in a film by Hollywood’s most respected director. Should he pass up the chance of a lifetime because the part is that of a machine gun-strapping terrorist?
June 5 – June 29
at the Thick House, 1695 18th St., San Francisco

Directed by Mark Routhier
Featuring Jessica Kitchens, Kamal Marayati, David Sinaiko, Mark Rafael Truitt* and Cat Thompson*

Thursdays-Saturdays at 8 pm
Sundays at 5 pm, followed by a post-show discussion!

On June 15th
Arab Film Festival Panel: “Arab Representations in Hollywood” post-play discussion

$25 general admission, $15 for students, seniors and TBA members

Thursday performances are Pay-What-You-Can

3 tickets for the price of 2 at all performances!

*member of Actors’ Equity Association

The Arab Film Festival co-presents:
Fundraising Party for Palestinian Film Lesh Sabreen?

Shot in the only Arab neighborhood to survive 1948 and remain in west Jerusalem, ‘Lesh Sabreen?’ tells the story of two young Palestinian lovers as they navigate dreams and dead-ends in their Israel-dominated and controlled community. A three-way challenge (social, economic and political) stands between them and determining the fate of their relationship. For more info, checkout: www.leshsabreen.com.

Come dance, mingle and support a good cause! Help make the voice of young Jerusalemites heard.

June 18 @ 7:30pm
Bollyhood Cafe
3372 Nineteenth Street @ Mission
San Francisco, CA, 94110
(415) 970-0362 – map

Don’t miss this chance to mingle with the film makers of the Palestinian short film ‘Lesh Sabreen?‘ and learn about film making in Palestine. This upcoming party is part of a continued effort to raise 10K$ to help complete the post-production work (editing, subtitling, music scoring, etc) without which ‘Lesh Sabreen?’ cannot be delivered to the screen

Please tell your friends and join us in supporting this Palestinian film.

The Party Features:
* Reception with the film makers:
(The director Muayad Alayan, the cinematographer, camerman and screenwriter will be there)
* World Beats by DJ Emancipacion
* Live Hip Hop by Triki
* Dabkeh Dance Show
* Silent Auction of Palestine Art
* Slide-show, Raffle Gifts & Arabic Food

Suggested Donation: 10$-20$ (or whatever you can pay. Nobody will be turned away).

The Arab Film Festival co-presents with the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival:

All My Life by Maher Sabry
Epic in length but intimate in scope — and certainly the most daring and sexually explicit portrait of homosexual life in Egypt yet put on screen — Maher Sabry’s film evocatively details the tribulations of 26-year-old Rami, an accountant and dance student living in Cairo. Rami’s boyfriend, Waleed, has just ended their relationship in order to get married. His best girlfriend Dalia is leaving Egypt for San Francisco. And his doctor pal Kareem is pestering him to be more involved in the city’s quasi-underground gay community.
As Rami pursues his own romantic path of one-night stands with closet cases and fetishizing tourists, Kareem is arrested in a police raid on a floating discotheque called the Queen Boat (based on an actual incident in 2001, which catalyzed gay Egyptians and a variety of international human rights organizations into action).
All My Life
Egypt, 2008, 150 min
Sunday, June 22, 8:30 PM, Victoria Theatre
Official Film Website

Be Like Others by Tanaz Eshaghian

Be Like Others is a provocative look at a generation of young Iranian men choosing to undergo sex change surgery. Under Iran’s current fundamentalist rule, a homosexual may be harassed, arrested and punished with the most extreme measures possible. Yet changing your gender is not only legal, it’s perfectly acceptable under Islamic law. So, to avoid constant persecution and possible death, a high percentage of the nation’s next-generation gay population opt to willingly sign up for costly, traumatic sexual-reassignment operations. For some, these state-sanctioned surgeries are excruciating ordeals that ultimately aren’t worth the agony; for others, the medical procedure is the first step toward complete, personal liberation.
The winner of a special jury prize at this year’s Berlin Film Festival and a Sundance favorite, Tanaz Eshagian’s extraordinary chronicle of Iran’s transsexual community follows several patients who’ve either gone through the process or are just beginning their journey to a new life.
Be Like Others
Iran, 2008, 74min
Monday, June 23, 7:00 PM, Victoria Theatre

Frameline32, The 32nd San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival is held June 19-29, 2008. For more information, visit the website at www.frameline.org.

http://www.frameline.org/festival