Months after the incident on April 13, 1975, during which Palestinian civilians were gunned down by Phalangist militia, the numbers are even more horrifying: 6.000 dead, 20.000 injured, daily kidnappings and a capital city half destroyed. This film, a unique document about the Lebanese civil war, goes back to the origins of the conflict as seen by a society that went to war sin...
A few days after a massacre in a shantytown near Beirut, the director finds the children who survived.
Jocelyne Saab, jeune journaliste et réalisatrice libanaise, interviewe le réalisateur et l’équipe du film pendant le tournage de Nahla, à Beyrouth.
Alexandria: by turn Hellenistic, Greek, Roman, Copt… and then a petit Paris at the end of the 1930s. Inspired by the texts of Cavafy and the writer Lawrence Durell, the film is a portrait of a city that has long been at the heart of the Arab world.A singular and poetic evocation of what Alexandria was, a multifaceted city, when it was at the heart of the Arab and European world...
The Architect of Louxor is an intimate portrait of Olivier Sednaoui, a disciple of the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathi, as he explains the philosophy behind his decision to build a house using traditional techniques and local resources, linking the ancient to the modern and ‘the infinitely small to the infinitely grand’.
Short film about oriental dancers.
Curvaceous and always dressed in sequins, the belly dancers—the Alma’—are present at weddings and circumcision parties. They are inspired by the belly dancing stars of the 1940s and 1950s: Samia Gama, Dahia Karioka, Naaima Aakef… Mainly lower-class, they come from every corner of Egypt and dream of becoming the queen of the Cairo dance palaces...
A documentary on the Iranian revolution from the point of view of Lebanese filmmaker Jocelyne Saab with Rafic Boustani. Filmed in 1980 during the early stages of post-revolution transition also captured in Kianoush Ayari's Taze Nafas-ha, the film contains rare footage of many interesting and pertinent subjects: public rallies of the Mojahedin (before the organization was banned...
After living clandestinely in Beirut to escape the Israeli forces, the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Yasser Arafat, left Lebanon aboard the Atlantis for a new exile in Greece and then Tunis. He talks about his destiny and the future of the PLO. Saab was the only journalist with a camera admitted on the boat.
Palestinian women, the often-forgotten victims of the Israeli-Palestinian war, are here given a voice by Jocelyne Saab.
The film was commissioned by Antenne 2 (France), but it was censured while still in the editing stage and never shown. This print was specially made for this retrospective by the conservation centre at Cinemateca Portuguesa.
The fourth Israeli-Arab war has been going on for more than 2 weeks. President Sadat orders the mobilisation of popular militias. The UN orders a cease-fire, but Egypt is still in a state of war.
The first convulsions of Libyan politics in 1973 and the country’s tumultuous relationship with Egypt. Report on the hijacking of an airplane at Benghazi airport by the Japanese Red Army.
The fourth Israeli-Arab war is in its sixth day. Syria and Egypt join forces to launch a surprise attack on Israel on the day of Yom Kippur. Tsahal (Israel Defence Forces) is forced to fight on two fronts: the Golan Heights to the north and the Suez Canal and Sinai to the south. The conflict has never been bloodier, the fighting never fiercer.
