Description:

From the award-winning writer of Control Room

Just when the world is losing hope about the possibility of resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict comes Encounter Point. Created by a Palestinian, Israeli, North and South American team, Encounter Point moves beyond sensational and dogmatic imagery to tell the story of an Israeli settler, a Palestinian ex-prisoner, a bereaved Israeli mother and a wounded Palestinian bereaved brother who risk their safety and public standing to press for an end to the conflict. They are at the vanguard of a movement to push Palestinian and Israeli societies to a tipping point, forging a new consensus for nonviolence and peace. Perhaps years from now, their actions will be recognized as a catalyst for constructive change in the region. Encounter Point is a film about hope, true courage and implicitly about the silence of journalists and politicians who pay little attention to vital grassroots peace efforts.

Encounter Point’s Israeli/Palestinian/North American/Brazilian production team of young women includes: director & producer Ronit Avni (formerly of WITNESS), co-director Julia Bacha (co-writer/editor of the award-winning documentary Control Room), producers Nahanni Rous and Joline Makhlouf, the first Palestinian female pilot. Encounter Point was edited in Jerusalem and Park Slope, Brooklyn, and features original music by Kareem Roustom, who combines classical Arabic melodies and instruments with traditional Jewish Klezmer to form a harmonious fusion that mirrors the subject matter.

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Directed by Youssef Chahine’s longtime assistant, The Closed Doors touches on several taboos in contemporary Egyptian society, examining their social and political implications. Set during the Gulf War, it tells the story of Mohamad, a highly impressionable young man who embraces fundamentalist ideas as a way of dealing with the confusion of adolescence and sexual awakening. This powerful first feature by one of Egypt’s most promising young directors tackles complex themes like oppression, jealousy, virtue, the love ideal and violence in an uncompromising way.

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“Reveals a finely balanced portrait of various social classes caught in a swirl of religious, cultural and personal fixations, done with remarkable sympathy, sensitivity and control.”
– Deborah Young, Variety

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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.

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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

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.

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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 director himself portrays a crippled newspaper vendor whose passion for a slinky soft-drink peddler decays into homicidal mania. (He’s Tod Browning to his own Lon Chaney.) 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

“Reportedly (and understandably) Youssef Chahine’s most popular film among Egyptians, this gritty and relatively early (1958) black-and-white masterpiece also features his most impressive acting turn, as a crippled news vendor working at the title railroad station. 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

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 ).

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“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

Description:

The daughter of a leader of the pro-North Korean movement in Japan, Yang Yonghi was separated from her brothers at a young age when they were sent to North Korea under a repatriation campaign.  However, as the economic situation in the North deteriorated, the brothers became increasingly dependent for survival on the care packages sent by their parents. The film shows Yang’s visits to her brothers in Pyongyang, as well as conversations with her father about his ideological faith and his regrets over breaking up his family.

Providing a rare glimpse into North Korea, Dear Pyongyang provides the viewer with a haunting and profound vision of one of the most isolated countries on earth.

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At Festivals

*February 2006 . Berlin International Film Festival. Berlin. Germany
*January 2006 . Sundance Film Festival. Park City, UT.  USA
*November 2005 . Asian First Film Festival, Singapore

Filmed with a borrowed camera and featuring a cast almost entirely made up of friends and relatives of the director and his producer/creative-partner Peng Shan, Taking Father Home is the story of a teenager (Xu Yun) from a remote village who travels to the big city of Zigong with nothing but a brace of ducks in a basket on his back to find and retrieve his errant father, who walked out on his family six years before.

Yun learns quickly once he arrives in Zigong, as there’s no shortage of mentor-figures eager to impart advice. Ying’s remarkable evocation of Zigong’s sights, smells, and sounds is breathtaking – showing the mood and character of an entire culture with just the simplest of touches and what seems to be the most basic of dialogue. Taking Father Home is an utterly engaging emotional experience, and Ying has established himself as one of world cinema’s promising young talents.

Typecast Releasing is pleased to announce the acquisition of Dear Pyongyang!

The daughter of a leader of the pro-North Korean movement in Japan, Yang Yonghi was separated from her brothers at a young age when they were sent to North Korea under a repatriation campaign.  However, as the economic situation in the North deteriorated, the brothers became increasingly dependent for survival on the care packages sent by their parents. The film shows Yang’s visits to her brothers in Pyongyang, as well as conversations with her father about his ideological faith and his regrets over breaking up his family.

Providing a rare glimpse into North Korea, Dear Pyongyang provides the viewer with a haunting and profound vision of one of the most isolated countries on earth.

American Radical North American Theatrical Screening Dates:

* February 11-17, 2010 . New York, NY at Anthology Film Archives
* March 8-11, 2010 . Seattle, WA at Northwest Film Forum
* March 12-18, 2010 . Los Angeles, CA at Laemmle Theatres
* March 23-30, 2010 . New Orleans, LA at Zeitgeist Multi-Disciplinary Arts Center
* March 28, 2010 . San Francisco, CA at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
* April 15-16, 2010 . Columbus, OH at Wexner Center for the Arts
* April 24, 2010 . Chicago, IL at Chicago Palestine Film Festival

Typecast Releasing is pleased to announce that American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein, the new feature-length documentary film from directors David Ridgen (Mississippi Cold Case) and Nicolas Rossier (Aristide and the Endless Revolution), enjoyed a successful premiere and week-long run in NYC at Anthology Film Archives in February—with Norman Finkelstein and the directors in attendance at opening weekend screenings for Q&A. American Radical will next play in Seattle, WA at the Northwest Film Forum from March 8-11, after which it will have its Los Angeles theatrical premiere at Laemmle Theatres’ Music Hall 3 cinemas in Beverly Hills. The film will be showing there March 12-18, with opening night events on Friday, March 12 sponsored by the Levantine Cultural Center.

A devoted son of Holocaust survivors and ardent critic of Israeli foreign policy, the polarizing American political scientist and author Norman Finkelstein has been called a lunatic and self-hating Jew by some, and an inspirational revolutionary by others. Exploring the deeply complex issues at the heart of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, American Radical is the insightful and enraging documentary that follows Finkelstein around the world as he attempts to negotiate a voice among his impassioned critics and supporters. Uncompromising even in the face of his recent denial of tenure at DePaul University, Finkelstein is revealed as a complex and supremely lonely figure whose self-destructive nature often undermines his academic credibility. A guaranteed argument starter, this potent documentary plunges viewers into the psychological and intellectual underpinnings of a vitriolic personality.

“For us, Finkelstein is the consummate documentary subject: a complex firebrand, principled to the point of self-ruin, at the apex of several of the world’s largest conflicts. A man who has never been asked to appear on mainstream American television, but who regularly appears – always creating controversy – in the international media. At once anti-hero, clown, and merciless scholar, Finkelstein creates as many storms as he enters. And to what end? When radicals collide, does it create understanding? Some would argue that it sometimes does. Others would claim that Finkelstein’s principled but too often bitter advocacy does much to discredit the cause of a just resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Audiences can decide for themselves.” —directors David Ridgen & Nicolas Rossier

VIEW TRAILER:

REVIEWS:

“‘American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein’ is a cautiously respectful documentary portrait of a political firebrand who presents himself as a beacon of moral truth in the murk of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” —Stephen Holden, New York Times

“With impressive restraint, the fascinatingly thorny ‘American Radical’ is less interested in the validity of Finkelstein’s ideas—seriously mounted, if inflammatory—and more in the topsy-turvy life of today’s professional academic. Amazingly, that choice doesn’t result in a boring movie.” —Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York

“‘American Radical’…presents a more balanced portrait of Finkelstein, who, when his passion doesn’t carry him off on a wave of anger, is shown to be thoughtful, intelligent and deeply melancholy.” —George Robinson, The Jewish Week

“A blood-boiling, very good documentary.” —Mark Keizer, Boxoffice Magaine

“(Norman Finkelstein’s) conclusions can be debated, his methods can be deplored, but as (‘American Radical’ directors) Ridgen and Rossier take pains to point out, a man so rigorously committed to putting an end to oppression ought not be so easily dismissed, even if coming to grips with such a challenging figure may be finally as difficult as getting to the bottom of the Arab-Israeli conflict itself.” —Andrew Schenker, Slant Magazine

“A guaranteed argument starter…an engaging portrait of an academic whose work is both fueled and undermined by his vitriolic personality.” —Chicago Reader

“A fascinating, well-rounded portrait of Finkelstein that simultaneously informs, inspires and infuriates…the filmmakers ride a delicate line, assembling a warts-and-all portrait that shows why Finkelstein is deeply respected and equally reviled.” —Mark Achbar, director of ‘The Corporation’ and ‘Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media’

VEILED VOICES investigates the world of Muslim women religious leaders through the eyes of three women in Lebanon, Syria and Egypt. Filmed over the course of two years, Maher’s film reveals a world rarely documented, exploring both the public and private worlds of these women Islamic leaders. Other Typecast titles being screened at the Middle East Studies conference this year are AMERICAN RADICAL: THE TRIALS OF NORMAN FINKELSTEIN, directed by David Ridgen and Nicolas Rossier, REMNANTS OF A WAR, from director Jawad Metni and the latest feature from Lebanese director Jocelyne Saab, DUNIA: KISS ME NOT ON THE EYES. Go here to find the full film schedule for this year’s MESA conference in Boston.