Screen Academy Scotland is delighted to present an evening of four documentary shorts made by students from The Independent Film and Television College in Baghdad. The screening is free and places can be booked by emailing info@screenacademyscotland.ac.uk

A Candle for the Shabandar Cafe

Director: Emad Ali // 2007 // 23 mins //
Iraq // Arabic with English Subtitles

Founded in 1917, the Shabandar Café in Al Mutanabbi Street in the heart of the old centre of Baghdad, was a cultural landmark, where generations of Iraqis came to discuss and debate literature and politics – a living repository of Iraqi intellectual history and one of the last places where people could gather to exchange ideas.

Emad had shot most of his flm by the end of 2006, but in March 2007, a massive car bomb destroyed the Shabandar Café, all the bookshops on Al Mutanabbi Street and killed and wounded scores of people. Days later, Baghdad’s poets and artists held a wake in the ruins of the street they loved so much and Emad took a small camera and went back to flm. As he was leaving he was attacked, his camera stolen and he was shot in the legs and chest, and his own story is an epilogue to his flm about the Shabandar Café and Mutanabbi Street – before and after they were destroyed.

Dr Nabil

Director: Ahmed Jabbar // 2007 // 15 mins
Iraq // Arabic with English Subtitles

A gentle and committed surgeon, with literary talents, works at a small understaffed Baghdad hospital, which suffers from lack of equipment and medicines. While many other doctors have been killed or have fed the country in fear of their lives, Dr Nabil has decided to stay. He worries, though, about the effect that the atmosphere of violence and brutality is having on his young son.

Leaving

Director: Bahram Al Zuhairi // 2007 // 22 mins
Iraq // Arabic with English Subtitles

Threatened with kidnap and facing escalating and horrifc violence in their neighbourhood, a Mandaean family from Baghdad reaches the diffcult decision to leave their home of more than 30 years and go to live in Damascus. The flm documents the painful process of selling all their goods and dividing up their house so it can be rented out and fnally it records their dangerous road trip to the Syrian border and their arrival to their new, temporary home.

Omar Is My Friend

Director: Mounaf Shaker // 2005 // 15 mins
Iraq // Arabic with English Subtitles

A student at Baghdad University works as a taxi driver to support his wife and 4 daughters. As he negotiates his clapped out taxi around checkpoints, tanks and traffc jams, he talks about work, lack of petrol, electricity, having daughters in a male-dominated society, his personal aspirations and those of his society.