هاداني ديتمارس

“Between Heaven and Earth,” filmmaker Najwa Najjar’s latest offering about love and divorce under occupation, is part road movie, part mystery, and part deep dive into the Palestinian psyche. To call its whole ethos a wild ride might just be an understatement.

Far from his native Tehran in bucolic West Vancouver, Parviz Tanavoli, the 83-year-old “father of modern Iranian sculpture,” contemplates the fate of his homeland. “My heart breaks when I see what is happening in Iran now,” says the renowned artist, who divides his time between a life of relative obscurity on Canada’s Pacific coast, and Tehran, where he is referred to simply as “Master Tanavoli.”

The spiritual cousin to the Shabandar Café — Baghdad’s literary heart that survived being bombed by extremists in 2007 — Mosul’s Book Forum is both an intellectual refuge and a laboratory for discussion and cultural expression.

The history of Erbil’s citadel reads like a cinematic epic worthy of Cecil B. DeMille

Possibly one of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited human settlements, the citadel is built on a series of archaeological layers crowned by Ottoman-era houses. It may have been the site of a temple to Ishtar, was an important center of Nestorian Christianity, and survived both the 13th-century Mongol invasion and an 18th-century siege by Nader Shah. It was home to the Medians and the Assyrians (who called it Arbela), Muslims and Jews, and has housed Sufi shrines and displaced squatters. Its mound-like form has been shaped by successive generations of inhabitants and invaders who simply built on top of the rubble of their predecessors.

As the world increasingly resembles a dystopian film from the 1970s and television news blurs ominously with scenes from Soylent Green, a recent collection of Palestinian science fiction proves both prescient and eerily contemporary.

Babylon has seen it all. From its peak as the Neo-Babylonian capital under King Nebuchadnezzar through its heavy-handed 1987 reconstruction by Saddam Hussein to its post-invasion demise when American and Polish troops ran roughshod over its ruins and ISIS threatened its very existence, the ancient city has witnessed empires come and go.

Part survey show, part historical document, the latest exhibition at the Palestinian Museum just outside of Ramallah, “Intimate Terrains: Representations of a Disappearing Landscape,” covers work from the 1930s until today. The show explores how representations of landscape evolved over time via a selection of iconic, rarely seen works, and special commissions by artists from Palestine and its diaspora, encompassing painting, photography, installation, video and film, natural media, sculpture, and even an “intervention” in the museum’s gardens.

The story of the Basrah Museum, which opened three new galleries on March 19th after languishing for 28 years, is nothing less than cinematic. Read it here.

The plight of the Iranian dual national, dozens of whom have been detained by Iranian authorities in the past two decades, was tragically brought back into the headlines with the death of Kavous Seyed Emami. The 63-year-old Iranian-Canadian founder of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, who died in solitary confinement at Evin Prison on Feb. 9, had been imprisoned with other environmentalists on trumped-up charges of “espionage.”

Returning to Tunisia for the first time in six years after facing charges of blasphemy for the making of “Laicite Inshallah,” her 2011 film about religious hypocrisy and government complicity with Islamist elements during and after President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s regime, veteran filmmaker Nadia el-Fani experienced an emotional moment.

Standing on the stage at the Carthage Film Festival’s November 2017 screening of her film, “It Doesn’t Even Hurt,” which depicts her simultaneous battles with breast cancer and death threats from Islamist extremists, she began to weep.

Fittingly for someone who divides her time between two river cities, DC-born, Baghdad-bred, and now London-based filmmaker Maysoon Pachachi says she is a woman who “lives on a bridge.”

“I’ve been a stranger everywhere I’ve lived,” says Pachachi, now 70, whose documentaries have captured life in Gazan refugee camps, downtown Beirut and medieval Cairo. “I’ve moved around my whole life, but I can adapt and fit in wherever I am.”

Director Jamal al-Moosawai wanted the new National Museum of Oman to be a space that grows and expands with its knowledge base, and is in tune with ongoing archaeological discoveries in the Arab country.

The result of a ten year collaboration between the Ministry of Heritage and Culture, the Royal Estate Affairs of Oman, Jasper Jacob Associates (J.J.A.), and Arts Architecture International Ltd (A.A.I.), the museum’s blend of the traditional and the contemporary, as well as its high-tech research facilities, make it unique in the region.

To be a cinephile in Tunis is a patriotic act. Tunisians came out in droves to last year’s Carthage Film Festival, which occurred a day after a terror attack targeting security forces.

“Everyone came out in defiance of the situation, to show their solidarity and love of cinema,” Tunisian journalist and festival staffer Yosr Hazgui said.

Leila Sansour is an acclaimed filmmaker, best known for “Jeremy Hardy versus the Israeli Army.” She returned to her hometown Bethlehem to document the detrimental effect of the wall on the city and its people. She discusses her latest film, Open Bethlehem.

The following interview was edited for style and clarity.

MEI: Tell me about the genesis of this film and project, and your inspiration for it?

While the post-invasion map of Iraq is often conceived as a neatly trisected nation with a Kurdish top end, Sunni middle, and Shiite south, the reality is one of mixed marriages and common humanity.

Although the changes once-mixed and cosmopolitan Iraqi cities have experienced since 2003 are telling (see maps of changes to Baghdad neighborhood demographics since 2003), there are many people and projects that cross the post-invasion sectarian divide.