Arab American National Museum Will Host 2014 Arab Film Festival

posted on: Feb 20, 2014

From the Arab New Wave to a true space-age tale lost in time, the 2014 Arab Film Festival offers fascinating new titles from one of the most currently prolific and creative filmmaking regions on the planet.

And this year, for the first time ever, the festival takes place at two venues: its traditional home at the Arab American National Museum, and at Ann Arbor’s home for fine film and performing arts, the Michigan Theater.

The Arab Film Festival is designed for fans of Arabic-language movies and adventurous art-film lovers seeking new perspectives. This year’s selections — representing the nations of Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Egypt, Tunisia and Qatar — were all acclaimed on the international festival circuit but are unlikely to reach American commercial theaters. Genres include drama, comedy and documentary, in both short-form and feature lengths.

Every festival film is subtitled in English, making them accessible to all.

The 2014 Arab Film Festival takes place March 6-8; the complete schedule appears below. It opens at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor at 7:30 p.m. March 6, with “When I Saw You” (Lamma Shoftak), the new feature written and directed by the acclaimed Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir. It’s a coming-of-age story set in 1967 in a Jordanian refugee camp that follows an 11-year-old boy who attempts to walk home to Palestine.

“When I Saw You” had its world premiere as an Official Selection at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival and went on to win major awards at festivals in Berlin, Cairo and Amiens, France. It was Palestine’s submission for the Best Foreign Language Film category of the 2013 Academy Awards. The Huffington Post described When I Saw You as “…cinematic poetry. Beautiful, groundbreaking and deeply, deeply moving.”

Indiewire.com calls Jacir part of recent new wave of Arab filmmakers who have made a name on the international scene. She earned her MFA in film at Columbia University in New York City and now lives in Jordan. Jacir was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Cinema and Variety’s Rab Pack: The Arab New Wave.

The festival returns to the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn for programs at 7:30 p.m. March 7, and at 4 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. March 8, when it ascends to its rousing close with “The Lebanese Rocket Society.”

This 2012 feature-length documentary charts the short-lived and mysteriously forgotten history of a university professor’s ambitious project with his students to lead Lebanon into the space age of the 1960s. Through testimonies and archival documents, the film retraces this adventure and attempts to revive the past in the present as a tribute to dreamers.

Directed by Khalil Joreige and Joana Hadjithomas, “The Lebanese Rocket Society” was named Best Feature Documentary at the 2012 Doha Tribeca Film Festival, and was an Official Selection at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival. TimeOut, London said “…this amazing true story has so much resonance in terms of turbulent Middle East history and the recent reawakening of idealism…”.

The AANM’s Arab Film Festival offers four separate programs or “packages” (A, B, C and D), each consisting of a short film and a feature-length film. Tickets for each package are $10 general admission and $8 for AANM and Michigan Theater members. Tickets for all packages are available in advance online only at www.arabamericanmuseum.org, and at the door at each venue prior to the screenings.

Package A films, at 7:30 p.m. March 6, will be screened at the Michigan Theater, 106 W. Liberty St. in Ann Arbor. Directions and parking information are available at www.michtheater.org or by calling 1-734-668-8463. Michigan Theater Members get free validated parking.

Packages B, C and D films, March 7-8, will be screened at the Arab American National Museum, 13624 Michigan Ave., Dearborn. Free, lighted parking is available in the municipal lot behind the museum; enter the lot from Michigan Avenue by turning north onto Neckel Street, immediately west of the AANM.

For further information, call 1-313-582-2266 or visit www.arabamericanmuseum.org.

The 2014 Arab Film Festival is made possible in part by MASCO, Kresge Foundation, Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs and the National Endowment for the Arts.