ARAB FILM FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES 2010 DATES, SEEKS SUBMISSIONS: More than $2,500 in cash prizes offered in new short film contest for young adults

Contact:	Kim Silarski		Suha Ahmed
	313.624.0206		313.624.0215
	ksilarski@accesscommunity.org		sahmed@accesscommunity.org

ARAB FILM FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES 2010 DATES, SEEKS SUBMISSIONS

More than $2,500 in cash prizes offered in new short film contest for young adults

Dearborn, MI (May 25, 2010) – The Arab American National Museum (AANM) will present a wide range of compelling new films not available in the local multiplex Thursday, December 2 through Sunday, December 5, 2010 during its 6^th annual Arab Film Festival.

One of the AANM’s most popular annual events, the Arab Film Festival seeks to present to the public films that offer alternative representations of Arab life; increase public exposure of Arab and Arab American filmmakers; and provide a forum for the discussion of questions raised by Festival films.

The AANM’s Arab Film Festival offers feature films, documentaries and shorts made by Arab and non-Arab filmmakers. Among last year’s presentations were several highly regarded films that gained attention on the international festival circuit including the documentary Garbage Dreams (Dir: Mai Iskander/2009/Egypt) and the dramas Dawn of the World (Dir: Abbas Fahdel/2009/Iraq/Germany) and Salt of This Sea (Dir: Annemarie Jacir/2008/Palestine). Audiences also engage directly with filmmakers and academics via panel discussions and receptions.

Call for Festival Submissions

The AANM is currently accepting film submissions of all genres and lengths for consideration for the 6th annual Arab Film Festival.  Arab and Arab American filmmakers may submit works on any topic; non-Arab filmmakers must submit films relating to Arab Americans or Arab World topics.

To be considered for inclusion, films must have been released in the last three years (no earlier than 2007). Films that have already been presented at the AANM are not eligible for consideration. Films in languages other than English may be submitted; however, such films must include English subtitles.

Deadline for consideration is 5 p.m. Friday, July 23, 2010. Lineup will be announced Monday, November 1, 2010 at www.arabamericanmuseum.org and via press release.

New!  AANM Short Film Contest

In conjunction with its annual Arab Film Festival, the Arab American National Museum is introducing a new short film competition for young adults ages 18-30 featuring cash prizes of $1,500, $750 and $500. The three winning films will be screened as part of the 6^th annual Arab Film Festival December 2-5, 2010 at the AANM.

The AANM is encouraging young adults to submit films no more than 30 minutes in length, in any genre, relating to a fusion of two concepts it is calling Trans-Ubuntu. Trans indicates movement across, through and beyond any person, place, thing or idea, while Ubuntu is an African philosophy and concept that loosely means a person is a person through other people. In Ubuntu, individuals are seen through the relationships of larger communities, through their humanity toward others. In a globalized world, what are the images, narratives, ideas, sounds, and feelings of Trans-Ubuntu?  The AANM encourages filmmakers to interpret Trans-Ubuntu through the films they submit.

Deadline for consideration is 5 p.m. Friday, October 15, 2010. Winners will be announced Monday, November 1, 2010 at www.arabamericanmuseum.org and via press release.

Complete submission information for both the 6^th annual Arab Film Festival and the short film contest for young adults is available at

www.arabamericanmuseum.org/6th.Arab.Film.Festival.submissions or by contacting Suha Ahmed at 313.624.0215 or sahmed@accesscommunity.org. Festival sponsorship information is also available upon request.

The Arab American National Museum documents, preserves, celebrates and educates the public on the history, life, culture, and contributions of Arab Americans. It serves as a resource to enhance knowledge and understanding about Arab Americans and their presence in this country. The Arab American National Museum is a project of ACCESS, a Dearborn, Michigan-based nonprofit human services and cultural organization. Learn more at www.arabamericanmuseum.org and www.accesscommunity.org.

The Arab American National Museum is a proud Affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Read about the Affiliations program at http://affiliations.si.edu.

The Museum is located at 13624 Michigan Avenue, Dearborn, MI, 48126. Museum hours: 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday; noon-5 p.m. Sunday. Closed Monday, Tuesday; Thanksgiving, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. Admission is $6 for adults; $3 for students, seniors and children 6-12; ages 5 and under, free. Call 313.582.2266 for further information.

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Toronto Palestine Film Festival & Art Exhibit Sept 26

MEDIA ADVISORY
For Immediate Release
August 24, 2009

TPFF: Toronto's Other September Film Festival

EVENTS: Toronto Palestine Film Festival & Contemporary Art Exhibition

WHEN: September 26 - October 2, 2009

WHERE: WHERE: Toronto and Mississauga: Bloor Cinema, AGO Jackman Theatre, the Revue, Square One Theatre, Beaver Hall Art Gallery

The second annual Toronto Palestine Film Festival (TPFF) is coming to GTA theatres in September. The festival will showcase 34 films, many of which are Canadian and North American premieres. TPFF is pleased to be opening and closing the festival with the critically acclaimed feature films Amreeka and Laila's Birthday. TPFF will also preview segments from Road Movie, the epic twelve-screen multi-media installation by Elle Flanders and Tamira Sawatzky, at the beginning of the weekday programs throughout the festival.

TPFF 09 will offer audiences a wide selection of award-winning short, feature, documentary, experimental and animation films. The films cover many different topics including Gaza, immigration, environment, childhood, music, food, media, sexuality, human rights and exile. The festival will also feature the work of prominent Canadian filmmakers including Larry Towell, Mary Ellen Davis, Taghreed Saadeh and Sidrah Laldin.

Running from September 28 - October 3, 2009 at the Beaver Hall Art Gallery is the contemporary art exhibition entitled Jewels in the Machine: New Media Works at TPFF. Curated by Reena Katz, the exhibition will display innovative and provocative video, audio and visual artistic installations from eminent Canadian and international artists.

On the morning of September 27, 2009, TPFF will be hosting Sahtain! Film & Food Brunch at 93 Harbord. The morning will commence with the screening of food-themed short films, which will be followed by a cooking lesson and tasting of a traditional Palestinian brunch.

During the course of the festival, TPFF will host several discussion panels featuring distinguished speakers including Palestinian filmmaker and academic Sobhi Al-Zabaidi. Topics of discussion range from stereotypes in cinema; film and the art of resistance; Palestinian cultural production; environmental issues; and life in the Gaza strip.

Presenting non-stereotypical cinema, TPFF celebrates film as an art form and means of expression by showcasing the extraordinary narrative of a dispossessed people living in exile and under occupation. TPFF is proud to be sponsored by the Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts Council and many other generous supporters.

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FESTIVAL BACKGROUNDER

Amreeka
Cherien Dabis - Fiction - 2009 - USA - 96 min - Canadian Premiere

Comedy-drama about Muna, a single mother who leaves Ramallah with her teenage son, Fadi, to provide him with a better future in small-town Illinois. As Fadi learns to navigate high school hallways, Muna, a former bank employee, scrambles together a new life cooking up hamburgers at the local White Castle.

Grand Jury Prize Nominee Sundance Film Festival 2009, Winner FIPRESCI International Federation of Film Critics Award Cannes 2009

Laila's Birthday
Rashid Masharawi - Fiction - 2008 - Palestine/Tunisia/The Netherlands - 71min

Abu Laila is a judge turned taxi driver who must purchase a cake and present for his daughter Laila?s birthday. This becomes an epic task as Abu Laila navigates the chaos of daily life in Ramallah. The film is a revealing and humorous portrait of a city and decent man at the breaking point.

Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2008

Road Movie Elle Flanders + Tamira Sawatzky - Multi-Media Installation - 2009 - Canada

TPFF is proud to preview a selection of segments from Road Movie, the epic twelve-screen multi-media installation by Elle Flanders and Tamira Sawatzky. Continuing their work on landscape and its relationship to shifting political geographies, each segment traces a single journey on Palestinian or ?Jewish only? roads ? all shot in stop-motion animation in single takes. One segment of Road Movie will premiere before individual programs throughout the Festival.

SAHTAIN! Film & Food Brunch
Sunday Sept 27, 11:00-1:00 pm
93 HARBORD, 93 Harbord Street, Toronto
Traditional Palestinian brunch with talk and demo by acclaimed chef Isam Kaisi. Screening two food-themed short films.

Missing Gaza Sobhi Al Zobaidi
Documentary - 2005 - Palestine/Israel - 13 min
A group of friends, originally from Gaza but unable to return because of the siege, meet for lunch in Ramallah. While making a traditional meal of molokheya, their conversation inevitably turns to politics and homesickness. The lunchtime discussion is inter-cut with footage from Gaza of their friends, families and homes.

Daggit Gazza Hadeel Assali / Iman Saqr
Documentary ? 2009 ? US ? 8 min
Politics, food, and family are the topics of a phone conversation between Houston and Gaza that serves as voice-over commentary to the preparation of a spicy tomato salad.

ART EXHIBIT '09
Jewels in the Machine: New Media Works at TPFF
Sept 28 - Oct 3, 12:00pm - 6:00pm
Beaver Hall Gallery, 29 McCaul St., Toronto
Exhibit Opening: Tuesday Sept 29, 4:00pm - 6:00pm
Exhibit Curator: Reena Katz

Artists and Works:

Jamelie Hassan - London, ON
The Oblivion Seekers, 1985 (2009 DVD format premier of film-installation work)

John Kameel Farah - Toronto, ON
New Piano Composition (TPFF Commission)

Project Hope - Nablus, Palestine
The West Bank: A Collection of Graphic Novels (Cells from upcoming book)

Sandi Hilal + Alessandro Petti - London, UK + Bethlehem, Palestine
Decolonizing Architecture (Silent Projections)

Jumana Manna - Oslo, Norway + Jerusalem
Familiar + Ramallah Computer Game (Video Works)

FORUMS '09
Not Your Harem Girl: Cinema and Stereotypes
Monday Sept 28, 4:00-6:00 pm
William Doo Auditorium, 45 Willcocks Street, Toronto
Panellists: Dana Olwan, Nahed Mansour, Natalie Kouri-Towe

As this year's festival theme is "non-stereotypical cinema," this panel will look at the history of stereotypical representations of Arabs in film, particularly Arab woman. The panel will also discuss how young Arab artists are subverting these stereotypes through filmmaking and literature.

Cinema Politica: Film and the Art of Resistance
Wednesday Sept 30, 3:30-5:30 pm
Beaver Hall Gallery, 29 McCaul Street, Toronto
Panellists: Vicky Moufawad-Paul, Ali Kazimi, John Hupfield

Three documentary filmmakers who use filmmaking to tell unheard stories will discuss their art together. The evening will include a screening of shorts by Vicky Moufawad-Paul, Programming/Exhibition Coordinator of A Space Gallery, and John Hupfield from 7th Generation Image Makers, an arts and mural program for Native youth in Toronto.

Steel for the Spirit: Palestinian Cultural Production Today Friday Oct 2, 3:30-5:30 pm
Beaver Hall Gallery, 29 McCaul Street, Toronto
Panellists: Sobhi al-Zobaidi, Rafeef Ziadah, Yafa Jarrar

The closing panel features three emerging Palestinian artists discussing what drives Palestinian cultural production today. The panellists will examine art forms ranging from spoken word to satiric filmmaking to dabke (Palestinian folk dancing), and how each is used to tell the stories of the Palestinian people.

For more information contact: Dania Majid, Media Liaison
Toronto Palestine Film Festival
September 26-October 2, 2009

e-mail: media@tpff.ca http://www.tpff.ca
http://www.twitter.ca/tpff

New Movie portrays Arabs in realistic light, now available on DVD

All Mustafa an Egyptian American Muslim widower ever wanted to do was live the “American Dream.”

And, maybe pay off some family debts, turn his small New Jersey falafel shop into a fancy restaurant, raise his two motherless children as good Muslims and Americans, insure his sister married in a proper and arranged Muslim marriage to his first cousin, and possibly, if there is time, even find a wife himself.

But Mustafa’s American Dreams, like the American Dreams of many Arabs living in America after Sept. 11, 2001, don’t come easy, and his story, really the story of the Arab American experience today, makes for a compelling drama and one of the best movies about Arab American life I have seen.

Maybe that’s why “American East,” a film made by two professional Arab American actors and producers, was never released into the American movie theaters. Not one major theater would pick the film up and play it to an American audience so lacking in any knowledge about Arab Americans in the post-Sept. 11th world.

The story of the movie itself, written and produced by Hesham Issawi and Sayed Badreya, who plays the film’s main actor, Mustafa, is a part of this American tragedy, which might have been better titled “Shattered American Dreams.”

Yet despite the bias, the bigotry, the absence of major mainstream media coverage and support, and the rejection of the film by a Hollywood industry that is built on hatred of Arab Americans, Issawi and Badreya have produced one hell of a great film that in a dramatic and award winning way tells the inside story of how Arab Americans have been abused and mistreated in this country through the eyes of one man and the people around him.

Though “American East” will not be released in theaters, it will be released in DVD format beginning January 20.

Running through the film is Mustafa’s (Badreya) first dream, to open a fancy restaurant in Los Angeles with his friend Sam (Tony Shalhoub), who is Jewish and Egyptian. They both encounter resistance from skeptical locals and families and friends that expose common misunderstandings about Arabs and Islamic cultures as they explore building a business together.

But it gets far more complicated than that.

Mustafa must soon decide if he will take the easy road and succumb to societal pressures or rise above the prejudices and live the American Dream.

There have been several post-9/11 films like “Babel,” “Kingdom of Heaven,” “Syriana,” but all of them have been about the bigger political context, offering a tepid glimpse into the reality of today’s world. “American East” digs much deeper and there are no sacred cows on any side.

This film, though, is powerful. Poignant. And brings everything together in a way the mainstream American audience could better understand the problems that exist around us and that complicate not help the “war on terrorism.”

Mustafa’s life is one of a string of tragedy and problems all related to Sept. 11 and American public fears. He’s done absolutely nothing wrong, but everything he does now looks suspicious. He’s arrested by the FBI and they question him about his friendships and money he donates to help his family back home.

His business, Habibi’s Café, is about to close and is damaged. His business investments are about to fall through. The Arab-Israeli conflict rages in debate among his friends. His family life is collapsing and he worries about whether his children will be able to survive in this society.

Yet, despite all the tragedy that falls upon Mustafa and his family, he manages to say what every Arab American says at the height of their own tragic experiences in this country, “I still believe in this country.”

The film has been compared to Spike Lee’s popular movie “Do the Right Thing.” Like Lee’s film, “American East” tells the story of discrimination and challenge facing African Americans in this country from an African American viewpoint, but also reflecting the reality of Black-White relations.

“American East” exposes the prejudice that exists on all sides, including in the Arab American community. It has a decent reflection of the diversity of the Arab American community itself, although the main focus is about issues facing Muslims and Christian Arabs, who are the majority in the Arab American community, are really a side show in the film. It’s an oversight we experience everyday in Arab American life and that needs to be changed, someday. But until then, this amalgam of Arab American storylines comes together to give the audience a powerful ending.

“American East” touches on many aspects of Arab American life, from the challenges that even face Arab American actors in Hollywood who can either play terrorists in films or not play anyone at all. It explores the reality of a family that lives in the West and embraces Western culture but that still believes it is okay to marry off young single women to older men they have never met and only meet weeks before a marriage ceremony is held.

The film also explores how young Arab American children face the challenges of being singled out because of their race and religion? “Dad, why am I a Muslim? Why is my name Muhammad? Why don’t we celebrate Christmas?” all questions many Arab Muslim children eventually ask their parents.

It’s the same experience that Jewish American children go through, though, and that is one aspect of the film that is very powerful. It shows that the Arab American experience in America today although unique, is also a reflection of the very same experiences that every ethnic and racial immigrant group has faced in settling in this country.

Except for Arab Americans, though, who have been in America from the beginning, their Twilight Zone has been endlessly drawn out and not resolved because of the never ending Arab-Israeli conflict and the suffering of the Palestinian Arab people.

The film is also somewhat experimental, including a cartoon montage depicting a brief history of Islam that Issawi credits to the style of Michael Moore’s 2002 Documentary, “Bowling for Columbine.”

And the film also has its critics in the Arab and Muslim community, too, extremists who want all or nothing, and usually end up with nothing every time. A great track record of failure which they proudly hail as success.

The aspect of the film that has upset many Arabs and Muslims is the relationship Issawi crafts between Mustafa and Sam, the Jewish Egyptian businessman who is his longtime friend and now a partner in a business venture that becomes strained by the government questioning, arrests and harassment.

In an interview in the Los Angeles Times, one of the few in the mainstream media, by the way, Issawi touched on the problems he faced.

“Escaping stereotypes and the seething history and politics of the Middle East, especially regarding relations between Jews and Arabs, can get artists into trouble. Issawi’s portrayal of the friendship between Mustafa and Sam, who convinces his Jewish family to partner with Mustafa in a restaurant, angered critics at the Egyptian film festival. Egypt made peace with Israel in 1979, but it is a political pact, not a cultural or artistic one. Films, music and books dealing with “normalization” are often vilified.

“ ‘It was hell,’ Issawi said of the news conference following the screening of ‘American East.’ ‘I was getting attacked by everybody. “How dare you try to make normalization with Israel.” And this was coming from journalists and critics. It was unbelievable. There was hypocrisy to it. I mean, don’t we Egyptians have a peace treaty with Israel?’’ ”

How dare you indeed, Mr. Issawi, make a great movie that tells the truth to everyone, even if everyone doesn’t want to hear the truth at all. That’s the essence of a great film and “American East” is in fact one of the great films that you must see to enjoy, to learn and to understand.

-- Ray Hanania
www.RadioChicagoland.com