A SUMMER IN LA GOULETTE
Ferid Boughedir, Tunisia, 1995; 100 minutes
1967, La Goulette, a port village near Tunis shortly before the Six-Day War: A relaxed atmosphere and an appreciation of "the good life" dominate in a community where different cultures co-exist harmoniously and intermarriage is not discouraged. Three families, Muslim, Jewish, and Catholic, enjoy such strong ties they succeed in rising above all hardships, despite the poverty around them. Then one day, the three daughters, jealously guarded by their respective fathers, refuse the husbands chosen for them-and the resulting tensions reveal communal faultlines in this richly imaginative story of a
town and its people.
Saturday, November 2: 7:15 pm*
Monday, November 4: 2 and 6:15 pm
THE LAND
AL-ARD
Youssef Chahine, Egypt, 1970; 130 minutes
Chahine's classic film was adapted from Abdel Rahman al-Sharqawi's well-known novel by the same title. Eight years in the making, this epic film about feudalism in rural regions was named the best Egyptian film ever made in a recent poll of Egyptian film critics. Chahine chronicles the struggle of a small village of peasants against the careless inroads of the local large landowner. The Land shows why political oppression doesn't necessarily lead to a sense of solidarity among the disinherited.
Tuesday, November 5: 2 and 6:40 pm
CHRONICLE OF THE YEARS OF EMBERS
WAQAI' SANAWAT AL-JAMR
Muhammad Lakhdar-Hamina, Algeria, 1975; 175 minutes
Winner, Grand Prix, 1975 Cannes Film Festival A lyrical account of the conditions that led to the Algerian war of liberation from France, Chronicle elates a peasant family's awakening to colonialism and the independence struggle in the perriod from 1939 to 1954. Exploitative French colonials, a mad village prophet, drought-stricken peasants and determined evolutionaries are just some of the characters that make this film a grand epic of betrayal and resistance.
Friday, November 8: 2 pm
Sunday, November 10: 3:45 pm
THE CRUEL SEA / BAS YA BAHR
Khalid Siddiq, Kuwait, 1971; 90 minutes
Acknowledged as a masterpiece, the first Kuwaiti feature provoked passionate controversy on its release in 1972. Set in Kuwait prior to the discovery of oil, Sea is about pearl-divers who live on the fringes of an impassive sea. Said dives for the largest pearl so he can marry a woman from a wealthy family. The film contains some violent scenes, among the most accusatory in Arab cinema. The Cruel Sea savagely criticizes a feudal mercantile society deeply entrenched in its privileges, the condition of women, and he hold of religion.
Friday, November 8: 5:45 and 9:50 pm
Sunday, November 10: 7 pm
NIGHT OF COUNTING THE YEARS
aka THE MUMM AL-MOUMIA'
Shadi Abdel Salaam, Egypt, 1975; 110 minutes
A highly atmospheric, beautiful and ritualistic story of the conflicts within a desert tribe when the legendary cache of royal mummies was discovered at Deir Al-Bahari in 1881. The tribe makes a living by robbing tombs. When the archaeologists from Cairo discover the hoard, their livelihood is gone. The film expresses the dilemma of the contemporary Egyptian who stands on venerated soil more than 7,000 years old yet is also anchored in a troubled present.
Friday, November 8: 7:45 pm
Saturday, November 9: 3:45 pm
LITTLE WARS / HURUB SAGHIRAH
Maroun Baghdadi, Lebanon, 1981; 108 minutes
This film and Beirut al-Liqa' (Beirut the Encounter) are the two films that have established Lebanese cinema. Little Wars focuses on a young woman and two men, a sort of lost generation, to show the raw emotions of civil strife, and the shabby victories of a stop-start war. Soraya, pregnant by Talal, and Srour each gradually become dissociated from desire, death, reality as their society slides from paradise" into hell.
Saturday, November 9: 5:45 pm
Tuesday, November 12: 2 pm
CITY DREAMS / aka DREAMS OF THE CITY
AHLAM AL-MADINAH
Muhammad Malas, Syria, 1983; 126 minutes
This outstanding, partly autobiographical first feature is one of the best portraits of the 50s and early 60s, a crucial period in Syria's history. Through the eyes of Dib, a little boy whose life is divided between his widowed mother's enclosed universe and the teeming back streets of old Damascus, City Dreams shows the tumul-tous times of this period: a military dictatorship falls, new elections are held, the Suez war breaks out, and Arab unity seems within reach.
Saturday, November 9: 8 pm
Tuesday, November 12: 4 pm
BADIS
Abd al-Rahman al-Tazi, Morocco, 1989; 90 minutes
On the island of Badis, a Spanish enclave in Moroccan territory, Europeans and Africans come together, acting out the dynamics of their respective worlds and cultures. Two women-the wife of a chool teacher and the wife of a fisherman-develop a friendship that results in each of them yearning ever more strongly for freedom.
Sunday, November 10: 9 pm
Thursday, November 14: 4 pm
