Censorship madness!!

 

Sadly Heels of war is now banned in Lebanon

No one should describe Lebanon as a freedom of speech isle anymore. Once praised as a place of liberty, nowadays, it is becoming more oppressing than any neighboring regime. Today, Heels of war (aka. Tannoura Maxi) got banned in the Lebanese theaters. This sad event follows similar actions which recently prevented Beirut Hotel from being screened, and 33 Days to being rejected on a political background without any sense of reason in any decision (made by theaters owners or the censoring body).

Every Lebanese should voice his refusal against such madness. Everyone should have the right to freedom of expression. All these decisions will contribute to only one thing: shape the Lebanese opinion into becoming more close-minded, therefore, eroding the movie industry that just started to bloom only now. All artists are invited to react sharply against the new oppression rules from gaining more ground and put stop to such insanity.

It is worth-noting that  gulf countries are now more freedom-prone than Lebanon. Films like Beirut Hotel and Heels of war were screened and praised in gulf countries, but rejected in Lebanon.

Update: The movie is now back in theaters, probably after complying to the censorship conditions.

Scrapbook

Trailer for Yamo which will be screened starting June 14

For all Lebanese movies fans, Metropolis is dedicating a Month of Lebanese Cinema, the collection varies from documentaries to fictions. All interested people are invited to watch the movies that match their taste.

Among the notable features, Yamo and OK, enough, goodbye whose screening will start on June 14.

Heels of War - تنورة ماكسي

Trailer for "Heels of War"

The long-term project by Joe Bou-Eid finally released into theaters. This movie is full of sensations and temptations. The viewer will enjoy the well tailored romance and the different aspects that helped its creation. Most notably is the charming Joy Karam whose voice was never heard, but her distinguished performance was remarkably attractive to the eye and heart. The plot is  to be a romance story paved with difficulties related to war and religious career, based on the director's parents biography. While the movie is poor on conversations, the Caramelish colored scenes are telling the story smoothly and in an elegant style most of the times accompanied with an amusing western original score. One should note that, if we discard the fact that the title is shown in French and the inconsistently chosen English language for the commentary, the movie lost his Lebanese identity as the supposedly Lebanese village rarely shows Lebanese traditions and most of the time, the customs can be confused with European villages and not from the Levant (e.g. bathtub outside?). Among other annoying details, the lighting is sometimes excessively misused (e.g. inside the room, light is spotted on the face of the retarded sister makes it completely fake and unnecessary). Despite these few issues (reminder: first feature by Joe), all are encouraged to degust this sensual piece of art.

Update: The movie was withdrawn from Lebanese theaters due to church intervention.

Young Talent - revisited

Demo Reel 2011 by Nareg Kalenderian

We featured Nareg back in 2009. Few years later, Nareg is proving his talent once more with his new short animation. Nareg is an artist who taught himself the different techniques in 3D animations (textures, materials, lighting, modeling, rigging, animating, rendering, ...). Even though self-taught, his art is, without any doubt, of great quality. He managed to improve his techniques thoroughly by working in local and international film industry (which includes Pixar). He worked on some animations in local and regional ads and effects in some foreign movies. But his skills surpasses these of an effects artist, and deliver some great costumes, makeup, sets design, cinematograpy all gathered with an outstanding art direction. Simply he showed himself talented in every film crew job, and more importantly he proved himself as an authentic director who takes care excessively of all details in a scene. Unfortunately, the infrastructure in Lebanon is holding him back, in more than one instance, he mentioned that the rendering of the reel took around 6 months with no possibility to run the bake 24/7 because of the regular power cut-off, which delayed significantly his result and reduced his productivity (note that the reel is done in his spare time!). We hope that his talent would get regional investors' attention to produce soon a first long animated feature from our region, with an attractive style and mood similar than those found in his reels.

Nareg in a picture taken by DFI

33 days (Drama) - ٣٣ يوم

Trailer for the drama 33 days

Not to be confused with the documentary, 33 days is a historical drama that attempts to build a feature during the start of the Israeli war against Lebanon in 2006. It depicts the first few days at Ayta el Chaab during the 33 days of the war where Israel mercilessly shelled and bombed indiscriminately Lebanon, especially the southern villages. The armed resistance and the population manages to fight back. As advertised, the joint Iranian-Lebanese production resulted in a big budget movie bloated with high comparse number and special effects such as explosions and computer-generated imagery (CGI). The integration of the effects enjoyed an elegant level of realism. The cast members included some acclaimed actors and some young ones. Carmen Lebboss acting dwarfs all the other performances, this huge gap is somewhat annoying to the viewer. Darine Hamze is proving her talent as an actor by selecting a role that differs radically from her previous ones each time. She manages to deliver some acceptable performance despite the use of the Hebrew which she learned to play the associated role. Unlike the cast and the special effects, the script lacks polishing and reviews. This experience should help the movie makers in the future to learn from current mistakes to produce better films. While this movie may entertain the viewers, personally, I find the same titled documentary a more educating and mind catching reel. Note that while the documentary focuses on the war away from the front line from refugees and civilians perspective for the whole 33 days, this current drama point the camera almost exclusively on the fought battles in the southern villages for the first few days only not 33 days as the title misleads. Another note, the finishing credits doesn't use Arabic at all in the role description of the crew.

Update: Some theaters in Lebanon canceled or postponed the screening of the movie. This is sad news, it can be only considered as a form of censorship, not a government censorship, but rather politically motivated one.