Arab Film Festival (and somewhat related notes).

"By now it's natural to expect a lot from the Arab Film Festival, which is opening its 11th annual survey of cinema from the Arab world and diaspora with veteran Tunisian filmmaker Nouri Bouzid's excellent feature Making Of, then presenting more than 80 features, docs, and shorts from 13 countries in screenings around the Bay and, for the first time, in Los Angeles," writes Robert Avila in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. "Ghassan Salhab's The Last Man (2006), on the other hand, delivers something probably less expected: the first Lebanese vampire movie. As it turns out, a Lebanese vampire movie not only makes perfect sense but is also the best thing to happen to the genre in a long time."

And Robert Avila previews the festival some more at SF360.

At the Evening Class, Michael Hawley has a whopping preview of several highlights. Also, more on Making Of from Michael Guillén.

The dates: The festival's already on in San Francisco, where it runs through October 28. Then, San Jose: Saturday and October 26 and 27. Berkeley: October 23 through 28. Los Angeles (this is new this year): October 31 through November 4.

Now then, two somewhat related notes. Link TV is hosting the One Nation Film Contest. Anyone in the US can submit a film that runs five minutes or less. It needs to be about the Muslim American experience. There's a total of $50,000 in cash prizes and among the judges are Danny Glover and Mariane Pearl. The deadline is November 25.

"Iran is bending its religious restrictions on television series in an effort to attract more of the country's audience to state-run television," reports Nazila Fathi in the New York Times. "One result: a spate of mini-series that depict love stories between characters who are not necessarily pious, and that allow women to show more of their hair - both of which have been considered un-Islamic." Related online viewing: Scenes from Zero Degree Turn, which "depicts the Iranian Embassy in Paris during World War II, when employees forged Iranian passports for European Jews to flee to Iran.... Scenes of terrified Jewish men, women and children being loaded into trucks by Nazis are arousing feelings of sympathy for Jews at a time when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has denied the Holocaust."

Posted by dwhudson at October 18, 2007 12:26 PM