Lebanese Poet Yehia Jaber

Bread and Roses Film Festival 2012 presents in partnership with Al Jazeera English Artscape, Kitchen Sink Film, Reel Festivals, Scottish Documentary Institute and GOL Productions:

a sneak preview of extracts from six documentaries for a new Al Jazeera English series called  POETS OF PROTEST.  This is a chance to talk to the producer and directors about the process of making these groundbreaking films as well as enjoy live poetry performances.

The series was conceived and produced by British Iranian director Roxana Vilk and Scottish Documentary Institute, and she will joining us from Edinburgh to talk about the process of making these films.

Yasmin Fedda who directed one of the films, about the Syrian poet Hala Mohammed, will be sharing her experiences and Danielle Smith from Sandblast Arts, who was instrumental in finding the poet Al Khadra in the Saharawi camps will be talking about the important role of the artist in protest movements.

Ghalia Kabbani

We are very proud to present Ghalia Kabbani a Syrian fiction writer, journalist and columnist who will be reading some poems of those different poets!

The films in the series POETS OF PROTEST use narrative observational documentary to reveal the hazardous lives of six contemporary poets, while beautifully filmed interludes provide visual interpretations of their works and a glimpse of the soul of the Middle East.

From the Egyptian folk hero whose poetry was performed in Tahrir Square, to a Saharawi war poetess in the Al Auin camp  this unique series of beautiful films will challenge pre-conceptions in both its content and visual form.

Event Time: 5 – 7pm
Event Date: 4th May 2012
Event Location: Bread and Roses, 68 Clapham Manor Street, , London , SW4 6DX, United Kingdom

Order FREE tickets via Eventbrite: http://poetsofprotest-efbevent.eventbrite.co.uk

Bread & Roses Film Festival is organised by studioSTRIKE and supported by Film London’s Community Pilot Fund through National Lottery Funding on behalf of the BFI

Venue: Mica Gallery, Studio 2, 259A Pavilion Road, Sloane Square, SW1X 0BP

Dates: 20th March to 29th March 2012

Times:Monday to Friday: 10am – 6pm Saturdays: 11am – 6pm (strictly by appointment only)

Political cartoonist and ‘icon of freedom in the Arab world’ Ali Ferzat has spent decades satirizing Arab rulers and authorities in more than 15,000 caricatures, offering an acute visual commentary on the brutal practices of the Syrian Ba’ath regime.

In 2001, Ferzat launched the satirical newspaper, Al-Domari (“Lamp-lighter”) which was forced to close by the Ba’ath authorities in 2003, and his cartoons have been banned in several Arab countries. For denouncing the corruption and abuses of Bashar Al-Assad’s rule, he was attacked in August by masked gunmen, who broke his hands as a warning.

In 2011, he was awarded the Press Freedom Prize by Reporters Without Borders and Le Monde. He has been nominated for Index on Censorship’s 2012 award for artists, filmmakers and writers whose work asserts artistic freedom and battles against repression and injustice.

This is an extremely rare chance to see work produced by Ali Ferzat over the course of the last year.

Ali Ferzat will also be discussing his work at a forthcoming event hosted by Amnesty International on Thursday March 22nd. For more details click here

This event is sponsored by Amnesty International, Mosaic Initiative for Syria and Firefly International

This time last year Tunisia and Egypt had already ‘liberated’ themselves, Gaddafi’s days were numbered and the Arab Spring was something being celebrated the world over – except by those few despots who obviously felt threatened.

Thus I was feeling good that in early May, I was going to be heading out to Syria and Lebanon to lead performances by The17. This was to be followed a few days later with one in Scotland. These three events were part of a tri-nation festival organised by an Edinburgh based set up called Reel Festivals. The festival was to feature poets, writers, musicians and filmmakers from each of the three countries. I was proud to be representing Scotland.

My youngest son was understandably concerned about me going to the Middle East, when the television news he watched was full of revolution on the streets of the Arab speaking world. The folk at Reel Festival convinced me and in turn I convinced him that Lebanon had done all the tearing itself apart it needed to do in the previous decades and were not about to start doing it again soon. As for Syria, the Assad regime had such an iron grip on its people that they would not dare revolt, and anyway the standard of living for the vast majority of Syrians was high enough that they would not want to jeopardise what they already had.

As for what The17 is, if you do not already know, I will quote you my stock explanation:

The17 is a choir. But a choir that uses different singers (and non singes) every time they perform. And when they do perform there is no audience but the choir themselves. And The17 are never recorded for posterity, so you will never hear them on the radio, or down load them off the internet or even buy a record of them. The17 make music that is about time, place and occasion. They also do not use words, rhythm or melody (much). Thus The17 is not for consumer culture. The17 can be vast or extremely small. It can be very frightening; it can also be exquisitely beautiful. The17 have performed 100s of times since first going public in 2006.

The performance by The17 I was planning to lead in Damascus was to be of a score entitled SURROUND. This is something that I had successfully led in a number of cities around the world, from Beijing to Port-au-Prince.

To make a performance of SURROUND happen, you first take a map of a city, draw a circle on it, so that in reality the circle would have a circumference of five kilometres. Find 100 locals willing to become members of The17. Place each of these 100 members of The17 at 50-meter intervals around the circumfrence. Once they are all in position, you get the first one to cry out at the top of their voice ‘Way-Ho’ at his/her clockwise neighbour. The neighbour repeats the cry to his/her clockwise neighbour and so it goes on until the cry has been passed all the way around the 5K circumference, this takes between ten and fifteen minutes. After this the performance is over. Or the physical aspect of it is, if done properly it will continue in your imagination for years to come. I wont go into how great it feels to take part in this and what its musical qualities are. You will just have to instigate a performance of SURROUND yourself to find out.

By early March, I had got myself a map of Damascus and the 100 Syrian members of The17 had been recruited. The route was not going to follow the perfect five kilometre circumference of a circle, but be around the top of the medieval city walls of Damascus, which are almost bang on 5K. I was very much looking forward to this performance by The17.

There was also another element to my visit to Damascus that I was more than keen to do. In many cities around the world where The17 have performed, I do a graffiti. This graffiti is always done on or underneath a bridge and it always says the same thing – Imagine Waking Tomorrow & All Music Has Disappeared – but translated into the local language.  Permission has never been sought; I always just take the risk. The people at Reel thought that taking the risk in Syria would be beyond foolish, thus they had requested permission from the Syrian Minister of Culture for me to do it. Surprisingly the permission was granted and the Minister even suggested the bridge. I took this as a sign that maybe the Syrian government was more open minded than we assumed them to be.

But by mid March, things were changing fast. Sections of the Syrian population were beginning to take to the streets, making their voices heard. I, like any good Western left leaning liberal, was pleased about this, even if it meant that my ten-year old son was telling me in no uncertain terms that I was not going and my responsibilities as a father were more important than me indulging my artistic whims. I tried to tell him that Jeremy Bowen’s children have to put up with a lot more; he did not accept this argument. He said what Jeremy Bowen does is proper, what I do isn’t. As it turned out by the end of March Reel Festivals decided it would best for all concerned if the Syrian leg of the tri-nation festival was postponed for a few weeks or maybe months, when things would have undoubtedly settled down.

The Lebanese and Scottish legs went ahead. In Beirut, as well as getting my first Arabic graffiti done, I met up with numerous of the Syrian poets and filmmakers who had been able to make their escape across the border. The general feeling, at the time, was that with international support from fellow Arab countries, the Syrian people would rise up as one, the army desert and the Assad regime crumble. None of them thought that Bashar al-Assad would turn on his people in the way that his father had done in the ’80s.

The months speed by, a new spring is about to burst upon us, but in that time news out of Syria has continued to go from bad to worse and our feelings about the Arab Spring have become somewhat jaded. On a personal level I am no closer to knowing what the international community, should do, but there is only so much wringing my hands can take.

A few weeks back, the folk from Reel Festivals told me that they were planning on doing a version of the belated Damascus leg of the tri-nation festival in London, working with the vibrant Syrian community that are now here as refugees and exiles. They wanted to know if I was up for doing anything. No sooner had they asked and I had the obvious title Damascus in London and was folding out my map of Damascus, then tracing the outline of the city’s medieval walls and re-tracing them on top of a map of London. I will instigate the performance of SURROUND that was to happen in Damascus here in London.

I got back onto Reel and presented them with the idea and asked them if they could recruit 100 members of The17 from the Syrian community in London. They said yes.

This performance of SURROUND in Damascus in London will happen on Sunday 17 March come rain or shine. It will be starting from the steps of the LSE’s Middle East Centre around the back of the Aldwych. Tonight I am off out looking for a bridge in London where I can do my Arabic version of the Imagine Waking Tomorrow & All Music Has Disappeared graffiti.

What I am doing may not speed the fall of the Assad regime or save one Syrian life but what do you expect from art?

*      *      *

To take part in Bill Drummond’s event ‘Damascus in London’ on Sunday, March 18th please email surround@reelfestivals.org

Links:

The17 – http://www.the17.org/home.php

Score 328: SURROUND – http://www.the17.org/scores/328

Damascus medieval city walls -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus#The_walls_and_gates_of_Damascus

Graffiti in on bridges – http://www.the17.org/graffiti.php

Letter From Khaled Khalifa to his friends around of the world

My friends, writers and journalists from all over the world, in China and Russia, I would like to inform you that my people is being subjected to a genocide.

A week ago the forces of the Syrian regime stepped up its attacks on the rebellious cities, especially in the cities of Homs, Zabadani, the suburbs of Damascus, Rastan, Madaya, Wadi Barada, Figeh, Idlib and villages of the Zawiya mountain. In the past week, up until the moment in which I am writing these lines, more than a thousand martyrs fell, many of them children, and hundreds of homes were destroyed on top of their inhabitants.

The world’s blindness encouraged the regime’s attempt to eliminate the peaceful revolution in Syria, with an unrivaled repressive force. The support of Russia, China, Iran and the silence of the world in the face of the crimes committed in broad daylight, has allowed the regime’s killing of my people for the past eleven months. But in the last week, since February 2cd, the features of the massacre were made clear. The scene of hundreds of thousands of Syrians who took to the streets of their towns and villages on the night of the massacre of Khalidiya, the night of last Friday to Saturday, raising their hands in prayer and in tears, is heart breaking and puts the humanitarian tragedy of Syria in the center of the world. It is a clear expression of our feeling of orphanhood, resulting from our abandonment by the world, which is content by political and economic sanctions that do not stop murderers or restrain blood bathed tanks.

My people who faced death with bear chests and songs is being, in these very moments, subjected to a cleansing campaign. Our rebellious cities face sieges unprecedented in the history of world revolutions, preventing medical personnel to attend to the wounded, as field hospitals are being bombed in cold blood and destroyed. The entry of relief organizations is also prevented, phone lines are cut, and food and medicine are blocked to the extent that the smuggling of blood bags or Satamol tablets into the affected areas is considered a crime worthy of imprisonment in detention camps, the details of which will shock you one day.

In its modern history, the world has not yet seen valor and courage such as those displayed by the revolutionary Syrians in all our towns and villages, as the world has not yet seen such a silence, that is now considered a complicity in the murder and extermination of my people.

My people is the people of peace, coffee and music, that I wish you will taste one day, roses the fragrances of which I hope you will breathe one day, so that you know that the center of the world is today exposed to a genocide, and that the whole world is an accomplice to the spilling of our blood.

I can not say more in these difficult moments, but I hope you will take action in solidarity with my people, through whatever means you deem appropriate. I know that writing stands helpless and naked in front of the Russian guns, tanks and missiles bombing cities and civilians, but I have no wish for your silence to be an accomplice of the killings as well.

Khaled Khalifa
Damascus

London / Edinburgh

March 15-18

A 4 day festival of Syrian films, music and theatre, London & Edinburgh, March 15-18 2012

At a time when Syria appears engulfed in violent conflict, the festival will present a nuanced portrait of the country and its people. On the anniversary of the uprising, Mosaic Initiative for Syria will also raise funds for Syrian displaced and affected by the current violent crackdown.

Ali Ferzat's work has been highly critical of the Syrian regime

Highlights of the festival include a panel discussion featuring world famous Syrian Caricaturist Ali Ferzat, a Syrian film programme as part of DoxBox Global Day 2012 including a screening of A Flood in Ba’ath Country directed by the late, celebrated Syrian documentary maker Omar Amiralay, a performance of Score 328: SURROUND by ‘The 17’ an international public performance project conceived by artist/author/musician Bill Drummond (KLF), an evening panel discussion on creative resistance with guests including Syrian Caricaturist  Ali Ferzat, Asian Dub Foundation‘s Steve Chandra Savale, Syrian novelists Manhal Alsarraj andMamdouh Azzam, and others. Following this we will host a screening of ‘Zabad’ as part of DoxBox Global Day and have readings by Syrian novelists including Ghalia Kabbani. There will also be a fundraising Syrian-style bazaar and major fundraising concert featuring Samih Choukeir for humanitarian aid for Syria in association with Mosaic Initiative, held at Kensington Town Hall.

Check out our blog for the most up to date details: http://reelsyria.tumblr.com/

London:

Thursday 15th March

7:00 pm: DoxBox Syria Global Day 2012: A Flood in Baath Country & Film Essay on the Euphrates Dam

Tickets: £10/£8   |   Location: Frontline Club,13 Norfolk Place, W2 1QJ

A Flood in Baath Country

Omar Amiralay was Syria’s best-known documentary film-maker. These two award-winning films are a searing critique of the Ba’ath party’s failure to live up to its promises. DoxBox is Syria’s only independent documentary film festival, taking place in exile this year in several cities around the world. Presented in association with the Frontline Club | www.frontlineclub.com

TICKETS NOW AVAILABLE

Friday 16th March

5.00pm – 7.30pm: Culture under Fire: Creative Resistance in Syria.

Free Entry   |   Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Road, EC1R 3GA

Join some of Syria’s best known authors, artists and poets for a discussion on repression and cultural resistance.

Featuring: Ali Ferzat, Manhal Alsarraj, Mamdouh Azzam, Donatella Della Ratta, Steve Chandra Savale from Asian Dub Foundation. Chair: Robin Yassin-Kassab

Ali Ferzat is a celebrated Syrian cartoonist who was awarded the 2011 Press Freedom Prize by Reporters Without Borders and Le Monde. In 2000, Ferzat launched the satirical newspaper, Al-Domari, which was forced to close three years later by the Ba’ath authorities, and his cartoons have been banned in several Arab countries. Since the popular uprising began in Syria in March 2011, he has made the government’s violent crackdown on protests the central theme of his work. For denouncing the corruption and abuses of Bashar Al-Assad’s rule, he was attacked in August by masked gunmen, who broke his hands as a warning. He has been nominated for Index on Censorship’s 2012 award for artists, filmmakers and writers whose work asserts artistic freedom and battles against repression and injustice.

Manhal Alsarraj is an award winning Syrian author. She has published a number of books including Overcoming The Bridge (1997) and As the River Must (2000), which was banned from publication in Syria  as it dealt with the Hama massacre of 1982, and On My Chest (2007). Her most recent novel was Defiant Blood, released in 2011 by Dar al-Adab.

Mamdouh Azzam is a Syrian novelist, whose works are a damning portrait of life under a dictatorship, as well as being beautiful works of literature. His novel Rain Palace (1998) was banned by the Ministry of Culture for religious/political reasons and his latest novel, Women of the Imagination (2011), is a story of a book-obsessed teacher living under the Ba’athist regime.

Steve Chandra Savale, also known by his stage names Chandrasonic and best known for his punk rave aesthetic as the guitarist for the ground-breaking British band Asian Dub Foundation. In 2009, he presented a series of documentaries for Al-Jazeera English called Music of Resistance.

Donatella Della Ratta is an academic specializing in the study of Syrian cultural production at the University of Copenhagen and the Danish Institute in Damascus. Author of several articles for leading scholarly journals, she focuses on culture of resistance in Syria and its implications.

Robin Yassin-Kassab‘s first novel The Road from Damascus is published by Penguin. He is currently working on his second novel while co-editing The Critical Muslim, a new quarterly magazine, and www.pulsemedia.org. He writes book reviews and political pieces for the British and international press, and blogs at www.qunfuz.com.

Presented in association with Index on Censorship

 

8:30-10:00 pm: DoxBox Syria Global Day 2012: Film Screening: Zabad & Readings by Ghalia Kabbani

Zabad is a beautiful and timely allegory, focusing on a family being pulled apart by the difficult realities they face as politcal dissidents in Syria.

Galia Kabbani

Ghalia Kabbani will also be reading some of her new work at this event. Ms Kabbani is a Syrian writer who has worked as a journalist since 1979 and is currently a columnist at Al-Hayat newspaper.  In 1992 she published a volume of short stories and in 1998 her first novel, The Mirror of Summer, in Cairo. Her second collection of short stories was published in 2003, and her third in 2005. She recently published her second novel Secrets and Lies which deals with Syrian lives under Assad’s family regime. In 2008 she was chosen to be a member of the first jury for Arab novel prize IPAF,(the Arabic version of the Booker) and she is a board member of Exiled Writers InK in London.

Free entry   |   Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Road, EC1R 3GA

Saturday 17th March

4:00 pm: Mosaic Initiative for Syria Fundraising Bazaar – for the humanitarian

relief effort in Syria.  Location: Kensington Town Hall, Hornton Street, London, W8 7NX

Click here to view the embedded video.

7:00 pm: Mosaic Initiative Fundraising Gala, featuring the renowned Syrian composer, singer and poet, Samih Choukeir (pictured below), as well as a performance by Khyam Allami on the oud. There will also be an audience with Ali Ferzat, the celebrated Syrian political cartoonist.

Location: Kensington Town Hall   |   Mosaic Initiative email: info@mosaicsyria.org

Sunday 18th March:

IMAGINE WAKING UP TOMORROW & ALL MUSIC HAS DISAPPEARED - Bill Drummond, Beirut 2011

1:00 pm: Bill Drummond: SURROUND in Damascus is an interactive art piece created for Syria in 2011 by legendary artist and musician Bill Drummond. It will now take place in exile, in London. Limited places are available.

To take part and become a member of The17, Bill Drummond’s international choir please email surround@reelfestivals.org | Free Entry

Edinburgh:

Thursday 15th March

6.30pm: As part of DoxBox Syria Global Day 2012, Reel Syria present the UK premiere of Hajar al-Aswad (Black Stone) by acclaimed Syrian director Nidal al Dibs. Follow the lives of 4 children from the renowned Hajar al-Aswad district of Damascus. Followed by discussion panel on creativity and resistance featuring: Film-maker Roxana Vilk (Iran/Scotland); Poet Ghazi Hussein (Palestine/Syria); and University of Edinburgh lecturer Dr Thomas Pierret TICKETS AVAILABLE NOW

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Shot in Beirut during 6 days in May 2011, this is poetry in performance, with 3 fabulous UK based poets, Ryan Van Winkle, Emily Ballou and William Letford.

Produced, Directed and Filmed by Roxana Vilk
Executive Produced by GOL Productions & Reel Festivals
Edited by Maryam Ghorbankarimi
Sound Design and Music by Peter Vilk
Production Assistant Stefanie Van De Peer
Filmed on location in Beirut 2011, with a Canon EOS 7D
and film sound recorded on a Zoom H2 mic and Rhode SVM Mic ( attached to the camera)

Commissioned by Reel Festivals 2011, Creative Scotland and Scottish Poetry Library and Firefly International.

This free to download e-book (published in association with Forest Publications) features brand new English and Arabic poetry translations from collaboration and performance with the Reel Festivals poets.

From Syria, Golan Haji and Rasha Omran, from Lebanon, Yehya Jaber  and Mazen Maarouf and from Scotland, Tom Pow, Emily Ballou, William Letford and Ryan Van Winkle, along with beautiful Arabic Calligraphy by Everitte Barbee.

We are immensely thankful to Creative Scotland for making this book and all these outcomes possible through the Vital Sparks funding, to the British Council for their sponsorship and ongoing support and to the Scottish Poetry Library, Literature Across Frontiers and all Reel Festivals supporters.

As the poet Andrew Philip said: ‘it fairly makes a difference when you know the poetry makes a difference’. We couldn’t agree more and hope you do too.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Produced, Directed and Filmed by Roxana Vilk
Executive Produced by GOL Productions & Reel Festivals
Edited by Maryam Ghorbankarimi
Sound Design and Music by Peter Vilk
Production Assistant Stefanie Van De Peer
Filmed on location in Beirut 2011, with a Canon EOS 7D
and film sound recorded on a Zoom H2 mic and Rhode SVM Mic ( attached to the camera)

Commissioned by Reel Festivals 2011, Creative Scotland and Scottish Poetry Library and Firefly International.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Produced, Directed and Filmed by Roxana Vilk
Executive Produced by GOL Productions & Reel Festivals
Edited by Maryam Ghorbankarimi
Sound Design and Music by Peter Vilk
Production Assistant Stefanie Van De Peer
Filmed on location in Beirut 2011, with a Canon EOS 7D
and film sound recorded on a Zoom H2 mic and Rhode SVM Mic ( attached to the camera)

Commissioned by Reel Festivals 2011, Creative Scotland and Scottish Poetry Library and Firefly International.