QUNEYTRA 74

Director Mohamad Malas become a key figure in Syrian New Wave cinema with feature films like <![CDATA[<i>]]>Ahlam al medina / Les Rêves de la ville<![CDATA[</i>]]> (1984), <![CDATA[<i>]]>Al leil<![CDATA[</i>]]> (1992) und <![CDATA[<i>]]>Bab el makam / Passion<![CDATA[</i>]]> (2005). In his early work figure several non classifiable shorts, amongst others, the beautiful <![CDATA[<i>]]>Quneytra 74<![CDATA[</i>]]>. Film is turned into a medium here, designed not to visualize memories in conventional terms, but to discover them as “image perdue” (Malas) – digging in one’s one sensations, in a Philosophy of experience, that integrates the reality of dreams and that can be projected thanks to the cinematographer. <![CDATA[<i>]]>Quneytra 74<![CDATA[</i>]]> starti with documentary pictures of people at the edge of the destroyed city of Kuneitra. A young woman with short hair disengages from the crowd and takes the direction of the city. Several times she turns her head, accelerates her path, begins to run, just as if she was escaping from the camera that follows her or from the invasion of alien forces. In 1967, the Syrian city Kuneitra was conquered by Israel during the Six-Day War, but re-conquered by the Syrian army in 1973 and was mostly destroyed during the combat operations. In 1974, the Israeli army pulled back from the city, that since then has been part of the “buffer area”, controlled by the UN. <![CDATA[<i>]]>Quneytra 74<![CDATA[</i>]]> is a feature without action and/or a staged documentary. It is an expression of farewell and arrival at the same time, a restrained emotional, unsentimental memorial of destruction and expulsion.

Will be screened together with <filmlink id=\"2563\">Handsworth Songs</filmlink>.