RSVP

Qais al-Zubaidi
THE VISIT / AL-ZIYARAH
1972, 9 min, 16mm-to-digital. In Arabic with English subtitles.
“THE VISIT sublimates narrative and visual conventions into a diaphanous haze of lyrical evocation. Linearity is here dissolved not through anti-narrative deconstruction but through a refutation of its alleged logical primacy.” –Celluloid Liberation Front, THE BROOKLYN RAIL

Mohammad Malas
THE NIGHT / AL-LEIL
1992, 116 min, 35mm-to-DCP. In Arabic with English subtitles.
“In THE NIGHT, Malas returns to the Syria of the late 1930s and ’40s to reclaim not only his own childhood as the son of a deeply troubled father, but also his country’s struggles with colonial rule and with Zionist settlements in neighboring Palestine. Malas’s alter ego is a young boy who lives with his parents in Quneitra, a rural village in the Golan Heights, not far from the Palestinian border, which was later annexed [and occupied] by the [Zionists]. Dense with historical references and haunting images, THE NIGHT offers an all-too-rare glimpse into daily life in the [Arab] world – and into one man’s efforts to understand both father and fatherland.” –SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL