Discusses the history of the Middle East. Contrasts old ways with the new in agriculture, industry, etc. in emphasizing the changing image of this part of the world.
Narrator
Discusses the history of the Middle East. Contrasts old ways with the new in agriculture, industry, etc. in emphasizing the changing image of this part of the world.
1975-01-01
0
Iranian people’s water requirements are mostly depending on groundwater, though these sources are swiftly ending and the farmers are overusing millions of cubic meters of water annually. This documentary shows the tragedy of progressive depletion of groundwater resources in Iran in the past 50 years. While analyzing the water managements in past decades, we will see the environmental and social losses of such plunder, like land subsidence and migration of more than 11 million Iranians to suburbs of megacities.
An Israeli film director interviews fellow veterans of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon to reconstruct his own memories of his term of service in that conflict.
After the insurrection erupted in Libya in the spring of 2012, more than a million people flocked to neighboring Tunisia in search of a safe haven from the escalating violence. When a massive refugee camp was hastily constructed near the Ras Jdir border checkpoint in Tunisia, a trio of filmmakers carried their cameras in and began filming with no agenda. This on-the-fly chronicle of the camp's installation, operation, and dismantling captures a postmodern Babel complete with a multinational population of displaced folk, a regime of humanitarian aid workers, and international media that broadcasts its “image” to the world. Visually stunning and refreshingly undogmatic, Babylon reveals a rarely seen aspect of the Arab Spring.
In May 1974, the Israeli Air Force carried out an extermination operation against the Palestinian refugee camp Nabatiyeh. With this as a starting point, it is reviewed how the last 50 years of Zionist colonization of Palestine have partly led to the establishment of the state of Israel, partly to the expulsion of a people, the Palestinians, from their land. The film shows scenes of daily life in Palestinian refugee camps. We hear various of the inhabitants talk about their desire to return to their country, and we follow how the resistance movement works to free women from their traditional backward role. At the same time, the emergence of the armed resistance struggle is analysed, and the significance of the latest military technological developments for guerilla wars in the 3rd world is explained.
The construction of a dam on the Euphrates River is an example of a country’s economic development. Through grandly composed images, rhythmic editing, and aestheticized details, the director demonstrates his admiration for the interwar avant-garde. The film is a celebration of the new, while at the same time showing a traditional way of life and calling attention to working conditions; it is a refrain-like evocation of an arid country that explores the difficult lot of Syria’s rural inhabitants.
The Israeli filmmaker Shai Corneli Polak records the building of the 'security wall' through Palestinian territory at the village of Bil'in. The villagers protest mostly peacefully, while the Israeli army doesn't react peacefully. By now the Israeli High Court has ruled that the building of the wall was illegal.
We Are Not Princesses is a documentary film about the incredible strength and spirit of four Syrian women living as refugees in Beirut as they come together to tell their stories of love, loss, pain and hope through the ancient Greek play, Antigone.
A humor-inflected history of the of the number one, covering military applications in ancient Rome, the measurement of distances in India, and the decimal system created by Leibnitz.
Historian Tom Holland traces the origins of Isis’ barbaric and sadistic violence which it claims is justified by the tenets and scriptures of Islam.
Houda al-Habash, a conservative Muslim preacher, founded a Qur'an school for girls in Damascus, Syria when she was just 17 years old. Every summer, her female students immerse themselves in a rigorous study of Islam, in addition to their secular schooling. A surprising cultural shift is underway-women are claiming space within the mosque, a place historically dominated by men. Challenging tradition, Houda insists education for women is a form of worship. Using Qur'anic teachings, she encourages her students to pursue higher education, jobs, and public lives, while remaining committed to an interpretation of Islam prioritizing women's role as wives and mothers. In a world rarely seen, The Light In Her Eyes tells the story of a leader who challenges the women of her community to live according to Islam, without giving up their dreams. Shot right before the uprising in Syria erupted, the film is an exclusive look at a social movement thriving in a country controlled by a repressive regime
In the Arab world, women are fighting a two-front war against repressive internal constraints and intrusive Western interference. In this program, a feminist delegation composed of author Nawal Saadawi and other renowned activists from the Middle East and North Africa gathers at the UN, on college campuses, and in church basements to speak out about deterioration of women's rights in the Arab states in an effort to heighten awareness of the Arab feminist struggle for equality--and the effects of U.S. foreign policy on their efforts.
This highly kinetic tableaux of uprooted sights and sounds works most earnestly to expose the racial biases concealed in familiar images. Relying on valuable snippets from feature films such as "Exodus", "Lawrence of Arabia", "Black Sunday", "Little Drummer Girl", and network news shows, the filmmakers have constructed an oddly wry narrative, mimicking the history of Mid East politics.
Follows the repercussions of the Israeli Security Wall and Settlement expansion in the engulfed/annexed Palestinian farming communities of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, examining the grassroots resistance movement that sprang up against it. An interminable road trip across hard and liquid borders, across a terrain that is being erased as it is being traversed.
The first documentary to present an unabashed critique of the impact of the Syrian government’s agricultural and land reforms, Everyday Life in a Syrian Village delivers a powerful jab at the state’s conceit of redressing social and economic inequities.
As the U.S. planned to withdraw troops from Afghanistan in September 2021, Canadian-Afghan filmmaker and journalist Brishkay Ahmed was filming IN THE RUMBLING BELLY OF MOTHERLAND. Revealing the ongoing dangers for women reporters, and the extraordinary risks they take, this brave film provides an in-depth look into Zan TV, Kabul’s female-led news agency. A professional journalist herself, Ahmed documents both the harrowing and inspiring work of young, female journalists over the course of the two-year lead up to the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Following parallel news stories as they unfold – two sets of national elections as well as ongoing U.S.-Taliban peace talks – the film reveals the daily hurdles Afghan female reporters and media staff face, underscoring the existential current events that threaten both Zan TV as a media outlet and the livelihoods of the women at its heart.
In a community of a Muslim majority, the first woman pastor in the Middle East leads a parish in one of the poorest city of the Mediterranean, in the heart of Tripoli, North Lebanon.
AMIN portrays Qashqai musician Amin Aghaie, a young modern nomad and his family who despite facing steep financial, cultural and political obstacles are dedicated to their art and culture. Amin travels to remote towns and villages to record the music of the surviving masters whose numbers decline each year. His nomadic family are selling their meager belongings to help support their son's education in performance and ethnomusicology at Tchaikovsky's Conservatory in Kyiv, Ukraine, but it is not enough. Amin, desperate to finish his academic education, sells his violins one at a time just to pay for his tuition.
Forbidden to Wander chronicles the experiences of a 25-year-old Arab American woman traveling on her own in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip during the summer of 2002. The film is a reflection on the complexity of Palestinian existence and the torturously disturbing "ordinariness" of living under constant curfew. The film's title reflects this, as the Arabic words used to describe the imposed curfew "mane' tajawwul" literally translate as "forbidden to wander". The video is also the journey of personal discovery for the filmmaker, the wanderer who falls in love with a Palestinian man in Gaza.
Between reality and animation, the story of Nidhal is told, a young homosexual Tunisian who defended individual freedoms in Tunisia through his work in radio. He found himself under a lot of pressure which forced him to leave the country and seek asylum in the Netherlands.