Can you believe it?!
We are just starting our 12th year serving greater Los Angeles. Don Heckman wrote the first LA Times article about us, positively reviewing our first public program, in a Calendar review published June 25, 2001. (We received another thumbs-up review in December 2001 by theatre critic Don Shirley and many more LA Times articles since.)
LA Film Independent with support from the Levantine Cultural Center presents Annemarie Jacir's new feature,When I Saw You (Lamma Shoftak) as part of the International Showcase, on June 14 (Jordan, 2012, 93 mins). The film is in Arabic with English subtitles. (Also screens June 18.)
A powerful recent documentary, narrated by Alice Walker, makes a reasoned argument comparing the South African apartheid that ended in the 1990s with today's relationships between Jews and non-Jews in Israel and the Occupied Territories. Israelis and Palestinians, controversial foes, two peoples locked in an inescapable relationship. But can Israel be "the only democracy in the Middle East" when rights for Arabs in Israel and the Occupied Territories are unequal? The Levantine Cultural Center presents a one-night only screening of Roadmap to Apartheid, cosponsored by Ms. Bana Hilal, Souhail Toubia, MD, the Council on American Islamic Relations of Greater Los Angeles and the Cousins Club of Orange County. The film will be followed by a public conversation. Light refreshments served. Tickets $10 advance/$8 members, $12 at the door. RSVP to 323.413.2001.
Jewish Voice for Peace-Los Angeles presents an intimate evening with the rabbi Newsweek Magazine named one of the top 25 pulpit rabbis in America, author of the new book Wrestling in the Daylight, A Rabbi's Path to Solidarity with the Palestinians. Says Diana Buttu, "Brant Rosen's book is a journey of a rabbi who moves from believing in liberal Zionism, to questioning it to eventually abandoning it, in favor of humanist values of equality for all, irrespective of religion."
Brant Rosen is a graduate of UCLA, a congregational rabbi at Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation in Evanston IL, and co-chair go the Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council.
Get some comic relief and laugh about the Middle East with one of L.A's hottest comedy group, the Sultans of Satire, in a special performance featuring Middle Eastern comics with guest star K-von. The Sultans of Satire are seriously funny-if you love to laugh, if you need to laugh, you'll appreciate this show with its satirical insights and fresh perspectives on American and Middle Eastern life. The humor is universal; the comedans hail from the Middle East and North Africa! This show's cast features Noël Elgrably, Zara Mizrahi, Sammy Obeid and Mona Shaikh, with specal guest K-von. The Sultans of Satire is the longest-running Middle Eastern stand-up comedy show in the U.S. Features some of the best young stand-up comedians today from diverse faiths. This show cosponsored by Freedom Theatre West. Tickets/info 323.413.2001. Watch video clips at sultansofsatire.com.
[Los Angeles-MAY 1, 2013] On Friday, May 17, progressive comedienne/actor and activist Roseanne Barr presents "Mideast Masters of Jazz," a progressive be-bop quintet starring sax maniacs Gilad Atzmon and Zane Musa, performing together LIVE for the first time. The event will be hosted at The Mint in Los Angeles, accompanied by some of the best be-bop musicians in Los Angeles. To be sure, jazz as well as rock, heavy metal, hip hop and blues are all-American music originals, but they are genres that are constantly being challenged and reinvented by swingers in the Middle East-by composers, singer-songwriters and musicians who are both natively Middle Eastern but strongly western in their tastes and travels.
Imagine that you had been switched at birth with a baby from another family...and just found out...
The Levantine Cultural Center will present the feature film The Other Son at the Laguna Hills Community Center on Thurs.., May 23, 7:00 pm. The Other Son is an unusually provocative "switched at birth" tale that captures the essence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. French director Lorraine Levy presides over an excellent international cast (the film is in Arabic, Hebrew, French and English with subtitles) that effectively conveys all the emotion wrought from the pain and joys of family drama. The screening will be followed by a public conversation with filmmaker-educator Mildred Lewis (bio follows below). Light refreshments will be served. This screening is consponsored by Ms. Bana Hilal, Souhail Toubia, MD, the Council on American Islamic Relations of Greater Los Angeles and the Cousins Club of Orange County.