Nada Abou Farhat in Under The Bombs
Anyone who went to see the delicious Caramel when it opened recently in the UK will realise that there's some great new cinema coming out of the Middle East. Now there's a second chance to see this charming, elegiac film about the lives and loves of women in a Lebanese beauty salon, as it features in a special season at Edinburgh's Filmhouse showing some of the best new cinema from the Arab world.
"My aim was to select films that would give an insiders view into the Arab World. Film is an invaluable resource in creating cultural understanding, and I feel these films do just that. They show the people and not the conflict that is so often the focus of the media," says festival director Stephanie Tait. But this isn't to say that the season ignores the burning political issues of the day - rather, it looks at them from a different perspective. The poignant Under The Bombs, for instance, follows a Shiite woman who enlists the help of a taxi driver to search for her son in the devastated southern regions of Lebanon, following the Israeli bombardment of 2006.
Music is another of the season's themes, with Dunia exploring the poetry of the Sufi tradition and following a young Egyptian woman who longs to become a professional belly dancer but must battle against a prejudiced society. Meanwhile, Heavy Metal In Baghdad tells the story of Iraq's one and only heavy metal band, AcrassicaudA, struggling to express themselves in a country where it's too dangerous to grow their hair, where they could get shot for their choice of t-shirts and where some militant factions are trying to ban music of all kinds altogether.
Rounding out the festival are Délice Paloma, which takes a look at the difficulties of life in modern Algiers through the lens of an agency which solves people's problems, sometimes in rather dubious ways; and The Yacoubian Building, which explores the 20th century history of Cairo through the story of one of its most famous urban edifices. Both resembling soap opera in style, these are nevertheless powerful films with a complex underlying agenda.
The New Cinemas Of The Arab World season will run between May 30 and June 5. Tickets are available from the Filmhouse box office.
