Ayam Beirut Festival - أيّام بيروت السينمائية

From 15 to 24 March, Ayam Beirut Festival will screen a collection of the newest Lebanese productions. The program is yet to be available, but the list of the participating movies includes some movies which  have mentioned before in this blog (or the associated youtube channel) and has competed in other Film festivals. Lebanese films supporters are encouraged to go as some films will fit their taste.
More updates will be posted.

Update: as noted by Ayam Beirut, the final version of the program is available here.

Update 2: Lebanese Rocket Society has been sold out, I wont be able to watch it to feature it on my blog, even though I was waiting so long for it :( , I should've considered buying the tickets few days ago.

Last Valentine in Beirut - آخر فالنتين في بيروت

Official trailer for Last Valentine in Beirut

This parody movie is the first feature by Salim El-Turk. The director of music-videos "Ajmal Ehsas" and "Enti Mchiti" came up with a movie over-saturated with sarcasm. The feature by El-Turk may be compared roughly to S.L.Film with a difference that it's not backed by a satire T.V. show. The use of stereoscopic filming (marketed as 3D) was somewhat unnecessary as it has steered the director to emphasize on depth effects in scenes even when such effects were of no added value (noted as well in the movie), besides it bloats the ticket price and obliges viewers to leave the theater with a headache after wearing uncomfortable glasses. IMHO, this 19th century "new 3D filming technology" didn't reach the maturity phase yet in order to be embraced by artists. The plot was enjoyable, but the director would've squeeze better performance from its cast including himself. The audience will have fun watching this feature. They will feel the "depth" in the "3D images", but "depth" will be missed in the plot.

TIFF 2012

The Attack by Ziad Doueiri

TIFF selection this year will include some very interesting entries from Lebanese and Arab Filmmakers. Among the notable titles, we may mention the third movie by the prominent director Ziad Doueiri (check the trailer above), and the documentary by the couple Jreige and Hadjithomas about the scientific ambitions of Lebanese researchers in pre-war era. Other interesting Arabic films to be screened during the festival are "When I Saw You" the second feature by Anne-Marie Jacir (director of "Salt of this sea") and "Zabana" by Saïd Ould-Khelifa. We hope one of these movies will enjoy the same glory as "Where do we go now?".

The Lebanese Rocket Society by Jreige and HadjiThomas

Update: The distributors decided to take down "the attack" trailer preventing curious viewers to enjoy few scenes from the upcoming movie. The provided rationale is that "[the trailer] says too much about the story and shouldn't be revealed to the public". Instead of suggesting an accompanying 'spoiler alert' tag to the video, thus, they ended up penalizing fans by removing the video.

Lebanese Film Festival

The Lebanese Film Festival is scheduled between 23-26 August at Metropolis Cinema. The program is rather interesting with some guest entries by Foreign Directors notably by Asghar Farhadi (Whose name was incorrectly misspelled in the programme!). This 10th edition of the festival has gathered a rich collection  of genre from documentaries, music videos, shorts, ...

Unfortunately, even though the only official language in Lebanon is Arabic, the organizers decided to discard the Lebanese official language from the released programme.

Update: The festival was doomed with an unfortunate organization challenged with major technical problems which spoiled some screenings (e.g. The Virgin Butterfly) and few entries were worthy and or politically motivated rather than artistic. The meeting with Nadine Labaki was strangely similar to a press kit of a movie instead of a real interview. We hope that next years bring a better organization and a richer "in competition" selection.

TIFF spotlight on Lebanese Cinema

After the surprise TIFF victory of Where do we go now?, the Lebanese Cinema is grabbing some attention worldwide. The award hosting festival is organizing an event that should interest all International cinema followers, more particularly the middle-east cinema fans. Canada is one main destination of a large Lebanese (and Arab) diaspora, this should give a decent momentum and venue for the proposed program. The selection is rather diverse and should meet all tastes with all participating features are post-civil-war productions. Among the movies on the program: Ok, Enough, GoodBye, Beirut Hotel, Falafel, and many others.
Everyone is encouraged to enjoy the Lebanese flavored cinema which is scheduled starting June 14.