Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label festivals

Middle Eastern Cinema

"The 20-year evolution of modern independent Middle Eastern cinema has been exciting, unpredictable, and in some cases, awe-inspiring. A few masterpieces have been made, such as Ala Eddine Slim’s  Tlamess ; Shahram Mokri's  Fish & Cat ; and Annemarie Jacir’s  Wajib . Documentary filmmaking has experienced a major leap in form (see for example the likes of Suhaib Gasmelbari's  Talking About Trees ; and Raed Andoni's  Ghost-hunting ). And film-makers have gained the confidence and experience that previous generations lacked. But foreign money and international exposure have come at a price: the subject matter of films has become repetitive; simplistic liberal politics have become mandatory; and formal experimentation has become a gimmick rather than genuine artistic expression. People tell stories partially to redress historical silences, but if the stories and the resulting images are so ubiquitous, then what’s the point? And if the message and sentiments of
It was a different Poland. Yes, it was authoritarian, but it has a sense of international brotherhood. It was not a Poland that joined the imeprialists in destroying Iraq. "The festival was the catalyst for a decades-long series of Polish press photographs showing people of African descent (PAD) visiting and living in Poland. Bartosz Nowicki, a Polish photographer and curator who currently lives in Wales, has spent the past few years researching these archive photos from the period 1955-1989. He recently curated an exhibition,  Afro PRL , which highlighted the long-standing connections between white Poles and PAD, a memory that is often forgotten in contemporary Poland." "Afro-Poland"