Description:

Fascinated by stories of the aristocratic Bustros family, who remained in their large 19th century mansion in the mostly deserted downtown section of Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War, director Jennifer Fox (Flying: Confessions Of A Free Woman, An American Love Story) leaves N.Y.U. film school to document her good friend Gabby Bustros’ return to her family home. Filming everything from an auto race to an elaborate family wedding, from a festive costume party to a group sailboat outing, Beirut: The Last Home Movie offers an intimate profile of the Bustros family’s attempts to maintain their upper-class lifestyle as the devastating civil war rages all around them. Filmed and edited in a narrative style, Fox’s documentary was an official entry at more than twenty prestigious film festivals world-wide and is the winner of seven international awards, including the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival. Following its U.S. theatrical release, Beirut: The Last Home Movie was broadcast as a PBS Frontline Special in 1991.

DVD Special Features

Reviews:

“…Densely detailed….[Fox] takes a seemingly simple approach that becomes complex and many-layered…” - Michael Wilmington, Los Angeles Times

“A documentary with the expansiveness and complexity of great fiction….It takes great guts to attempt an audacious feat like this one, and something like genius to pull it off.” - Hal Hinson, Washington Post

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Description:

In this beautiful classic film from legendary director Youssef Chahine, Cairo’s main railroad station is used to represent all of Egyptian society. We see a community comprised of luggage carriers and soft-drink vendors living in abandoned train cars.

A crippled newspaper dealer, Kinawi (played by Chahine himself), falls in love with the beautiful but indifferent Hanuma (Hind Rostom), a lemonade seller who only has eyes for the handsome Abu Sri’. Swept away by his obsessive desire, Kinawi kidnaps the object of his passion, with terrible consequences.

Chahine received international recognition when this masterpiece of sexuality, repression, madness and violence among society’s marginalized played at the Berlin Film Festival, where it was nominated for a Golden Bear in 1958.

Reviews:

“A blend of sensuality and film noir, set against a backdrop of lower-depths neorealism, Cairo Station is essentially an underclass psycho-thriller. The Chahine of Cairo Station is a world-class engineer of expressionistic gothic shadow effects whose restless camera seems to peer into the souls of his fevered characters.”

–David Chute, L.A. Weekly

“The adroit interweaving of various miniplots around the station is matched by a heady mix of moods and genres: At various junctures this movie becomes a musical, a slasher film, a neorealist drama, a comedy, and a horror film – come to think of it, it’s pretty noir as well.”

–Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

“Today, this DVD release offers serious cinephiles a rare chance to understand Chahine’s importance, which has been rooted in reputation and not retrospective for too many years (the majority of his films are not available in U.S. on DVD). This long-overdue release is very highly recommended.”

- Phil Hall, Film Threat

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Description:

A visual poem of incomparable beauty, this masterpiece from director Nacer Khemir (Wanderers of the Desert ) begins with the story of a blind dervish named Bab’Aziz and his spirited granddaughter, Ishtar. Together they wander the desert in search of a great reunion of dervishes that takes place just once every thirty years. With faith as their only guide, the two journey for days through the expansive, barren landscape. To keep Ishtar entertained, Bab’Aziz relays the ancient tale of a prince who relinquished his realm in order to remain next to a small pool in the desert, staring into its depths while contemplating his soul. As the tale of the prince unfolds, the two encounter other travelers with stories of their own – including Osman, who longs for the beautiful woman he met at the bottom of a well, and Zaid, who searches for the ravishing young woman who fled from him after being seduced by his songs. Filled with breathtaking images and wonderful music, Nacir Khemir has created a fairytale-like story of longing and belonging, filmed in the enchanting and ever-shifting sandscapes of Tunisia and Iran.

Director Nacer Khemir’s past cinematic achievements include his award-winning features Les Baliseurs du Désert (Wanderers of the Desert ), awarded Grand Prix of the Festival des Trois Continents in 1984, and Le Collier Perdu de la Colombe (The Dove’s Lost Necklace ), which won the Special Jury Prize at Locarno in 1991. The script was written by Nacer Khemir with the participation of screenwriter Tonino Guerra (Amarcord ,Night of the Shooting Stars , Blowup and L’Avventura ).

Reviews:

“Bab’Aziz enchants with its beautiful and profound depictions of the love that animates our relationship with the Beloved, with the world, and with our neighbors.” - Fredric & Mary Brusset, Spiritualityandpractice.com

“The third feature by the Tunisian filmmaker and poet Nacer Khemir is a structurally audacious fairy tale that imparts moral lessons and shows how narratives reflect and shape life,” - Matt Zoller Seitz, The New York Times

“The breathtaking desert landscapes that dominate Nacer Khemir’s beautiful, elliptical Middle East drama deserve the big screen. . . you’ll remember the dreamlike state the film induces long after the credits roll.”
- New York Magazine

“The arrival of th[is] film is … something worth singing and dancing about.” - Phil Hall, Film Threat

“[Nacer] Khemir, a poet and a painter as well as a filmmaker… uses the endless, timeless desert landscape to create an existence in which past and present coexist.” - Sean Axmaker, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“It’s not a film for the impatient — no guns, no chases, no explosions. What it does have is beautiful cinematography and a thoroughly positive vibe.” - Mike Scott, Time Picayune

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Description:

A traveling writer and teller of fables, Nacer Khemir here applies his age-old skills to a narrative feature film, the first in the highly regarded Desert Trilogy that includes The Dove’s Lost Necklace and Bab’Aziz – The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul.

Khemir creates an exotic world withWanderers of the Desert when a young teacher arrives to take over a village school isolated in the shimmering desert. Reminiscent of the best Iranian films of the 1970s in its use of color and setting, it also has something of the wit, cruelty and ambiguity of the Arabian Nights. Legendary figures materialize out of wells and the desert itself, groups of children hurry through a labyrinth of underground corridors, the teacher is whisked away to a mysterious rendezvous and never returns. Nothing is really explained; Khemir merely shows how legend, tradition and fate hang heavily over this community and he does so with a richly expressive visual style aided by superb use of color. Especially notable is the way the protagonists are always placed against sun-scorched landscapes in which nothing is quite what it seems, like the marvelous moment when everyone gathers around a ship that has mysteriously washed up in the desert sand.

Reviews:

“A meditation on the lost grandeur of Arab civilization”
– Seattle Arab and Iranian Film Festival

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