Arab Film Festival at Dearborn's National Arab Museum Focuses on Pre-'Arab Spring' Cinema

posted on: Dec 1, 2011

An annual festival of movies from the Middle East is focusing its lens this year on films and filmmakers in the years leading up to the so-called Arab Spring.

The Arab American National Museum in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn is hosting the 7th annual festival that starts Thursday and runs through Sunday. The year’s event is titled “Before the Spring: Alternative Arab Cinema from 2005 through Today.”

The films precede the pro-democracy uprisings across the Arab World during the past year. Festival organizers say the festival reflects a variety of themes and visual styles of works by filmmakers from Morocco to Iraq.

The festival is presented by the museum and the New York-based nonprofit ArteEast.