Elia Suleiman
Filmmaker Elia Suleiman travels to different cities and finds unexpected parallels to his homeland of Palestine.
Khalo Matabane spent two years making the film, interviewing those who knew and loved Mandela, and also those who criticised him. Global thinkers, politicians and artists including the Dalai Lama, Henry Kissinger and Ariel Dorfman talk about the effect of his policies and his decision making. Their thoughts are weighed equally with ordinary South Africans like Charity Kondile, who refuses to forgive her son's apartheid operative murderer. Through these interviews, completed in the last months of Mandela's life, Matabane interrogates for himself the meaning of freedom, reconciliation and forgiveness. By doing so he challenges Mandela's enduring impact in today's world of conflict and inequality. Thought-provoking and reflective, Mandela, the Myth and Me is a moving film which frames Mandela from a fresh, deeply personal perspective. (Storyville)
A young American boy is trying to break into the acting business, and goes to Cuba during a film festival.
An examination of the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 through to the present day. A semi-biographic film, in four chapters, about a family spanning from 1948 until recent times. Combined with intimate memories of each member, the film attempts to portray the daily life of those Palestinians who remained in their land and were labelled "Israeli-Arabs," living as a minority in their own homeland.
Seventy critics and filmmakers discuss cinema around the conflict between the artist and the observer, the creator and the critic. Between 1998 and 2007, Kléber Mendonça Filho recorded testimonies about this relationship in Brazil, the United States and Europe, based on his experience as a critic.
A collective film of 33 shorts directed by different directors about their feeling about cinema.
Melé is a bar singer, her husband Chaka is out of work and the couple is on the verge of breaking up... In the courtyard of the house they share with other families, a trial court has been set up. African civil society spokesmen have taken proceedings against the World Bank and the IMF whom they blame for Africa's woes... Amidst the pleas and the testimonies, life goes on in the courtyard. Chaka does not seem to be concerned by this novel Africa's desire to fight for its rights.
Santa Claus tries to outrun a gang of knife-wielding youth. It's one of several vignettes of Palestinian life in Israel - in a neighborhood in Nazareth and at Al-Ram checkpoint in East Jerusalem. Most of the stories are droll, some absurd, one is mythic and fanciful; few words are spoken. A man who goes through his mail methodically each morning has a heart attack. His son visits him in hospital. The son regularly meets a woman at Al-Ram; they sit in a car, hands caressing. Once, she defies Israeli guards at the checkpoint; later, Ninja-like, she takes on soldiers at a target range. A red balloon floats free overhead. Neighbors toss garbage over walls. Life goes on until it doesn't.
Tweed, Bird, and Johnny are three outcasts who just want to belong. Obsessed with computer games they buy one from a street peddler and end up entering an alternate universe, much like theirs but instead they're the most popular boys in school. The alternate universe is their dream world and they have to choose whether or not to leave.
The Palestinian film-maker Elia Suleiman goes in search of his past and possible future in occupied territory. Wherever he looks, he feels surrounded by images and places that have a political significance. Can a landscape be free of meaning, is there any point in striving for an approach that transcends all ideology?
Chronicle of a Disappearance unfolds in a series of seemingly unconnected cinematic tableaux, each of them focused on incidents or characters which seldom reappear later in the film. Among the many unrelated scenes, there is a Palestinian actress struggling to find an apartment in West Jerusalem, the owner of the Holy Land souvenir shop preparing merchandise for incoming Japanese tourists, a group of old women gossiping about their relatives, and an Israeli police van which screeches to a halt so several heavily armed soldiers can get off the car and urinate.
The second Gulf War from 1990 to 1991 represents in the collective Arab memory a turning point in regards to the Arab nationalism’s self-perception as well as a moment of deep historical and existential insecurity. Five Arab directors discuss the events from their personal perspective.
A Palestinian filmmaker is writing a script in his New York apartment during the first Gulf war. As much as he tries to shut himself off from the exterior world, images of past wars in the Middle East come back to haunt him.
This highly kinetic tableaux of uprooted sights and sounds works most earnestly to expose the racial biases concealed in familiar images. Relying on valuable snippets from feature films such as "Exodus", "Lawrence of Arabia", "Black Sunday", "Little Drummer Girl", and network news shows, the filmmakers have constructed an oddly wry narrative, mimicking the history of Mid East politics.
