The Road to Damascus: Discovering Syrian Cinema

9/7/06 to 10/12/06

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The Road to Damascus: Discovering Syrian Cinema

9/7/06 to 10/12/06

We are pleased to take part in the first North American touring retrospective of Syrian cinema from the 1970s to the present-a series that has received stunning accolades in New York and in national magazines. “Neglected-ignored even-Syrian cinema merits special attention for its originality, quality, and boldness,” writes Cécile Boëx in Film Comment. To say that Syrian filmmakers work under difficult conditions is an understatement; censorship is intimately tied in with a lack of a real industrial infrastructure for film production (many filmmakers are forced to wait years between projects). Living in what Stuart Klawans in The Nation called “internal exile,” these extraordinarily committed artists make “state-financed pictures (that) are beautiful, strange, uncanny provocations,” and that frequently are banned for local viewing even as they are acclaimed abroad.

The series at PFA focuses on three master...

The series at PFA focuses on three master directors: documentary filmmaker Omar Amiralay, the subject of a special homage at this year's Cinéma du Réel Festival in Paris; Oussama Mohammad; and Mohammad Malas. Both Malas and Mohammad studied at the great Soviet film school VGIK; Film Society of Lincoln Center's Richard Peña writes, “They are fine exemplars of the VGIK style, an approach that opts for carefully composed, almost iconographic shots. . . . (Syrian) filmmakers are intensely aware that each film, each shot, really has to count.” In addition, our series brings new and historic voices to light in programs of short documentary and narrative films.

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Curated at PFA by Kathy Geritz and Rasha Salti. Program notes adapted from Film Society of Lincoln Center publications.

The presentation of The Road to Damascus at PFA is cosponsored by The Center for Middle Eastern Studies at UC Berkeley, and by the 10th Annual Arab Film Festival. For information on the festival's screenings of Syrian films, please phone (415) 564-1100 or visit www.aff.org.

The Road to Damascus is part of “Lens on Syria: Thirty Years of Contemporary Syrian Cinema,” a touring exhibition organized by ArteEast, a nonprofit arts organization based in New York that promotes the arts and cultures of the Middle East. At PFA, we wish to extend our gratitude to Rasha Salti, director and curator of the touring showcase, and Livia Alexander, executive director of ArteEast, as well as the Film Society of Lincoln Center, where the series was first presented, and from whom we have borrowed our exhibition title.

Support for the series has been generously provided by the Ousseimi Foundation (Switzerland) and the Department for Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC) at Columbia University. Special thanks to Abdellatif Abdul-Hamid, the Embassy of the Syrian Arab Republic in Washington DC (H.E. Dr. Imad Moustapha and Lina Kawakibi), Hilary Clark, Mitra Abbaspour, Fanny Lesage (FEMIS), Hisham el-Zouki, Mohammad Malas, Intissar Safia, Mohammad el-Roumi, Meyar el-Roumi, Ammar el-Beik, Samir Zikra, and Nabil Maleh. Extra special thanks to Maria Ousseimi al-Akhaoui, Orwa Nyrabia and Diana el-Jeiroudi (Proaction Film), Oussama Mohammad, Hala al-Abdallah Yakoub, Omar Amiralay, and Efrem Kossaifi.