Event Details

Date/Time: 

Oct 29 2010 7:00pm - Nov 30 2010 10:00pm

Price: 

Free to the public

Where: 

inside/Outside Gallery
Levantine Cultural Center
5998 W. Pico Blvd.
Los Angeles CA 90035-2657
one block east of Crescent Heights
ample street parking or across in the CVS underground lot (till 10 pm only)

Swimming Down the Nile. Faces from Ethiopia to Cairo

Ramadan's Lanterns: mixed media, by Olfet AgramaA retrospective by Olfet Agrama

October 29-November 30, 2010

The work of Olfet Agrama spans four decades depicting people, landscapes and still life in the Middle East, Europe and the United States. The current show includes 30 works from her paintings on cultures of Africa and North Africa.

Educated at Cairo University with a Bachelor of Arts, Olfet Agrama received a Master's in English Literature from UCLA and studied art at the UCLA Art Department Extension, and later at the Brentwood Art Center 2002-2003. Ms. Agrama has participated in artist workshops in Provence, France from 1999-2003, and in Mojacar, Spain, from 1990-2002.

Reviewed by Jordan Elgrably

Natacha Atlas: live at the Skirball July 29, 2010In a mellifluous voice that was at once deep, soft, beautiful and strong, former Transglobal Underground vocalist Natacha Atlas brought her east-west repertoire back to Los Angeles on July 29. The cross-over artist performed in a free open-air concert at the Skirball Center that was supported by the L.A. County Arts Commission and the city's Department of Cultural Affairs. A star in parts of Europe and the Middle East, Natacha Atlas has a smaller following Stateside but certainly merits a broader audience, both among those who love world music and fusion, and others with a passion for female vocalists.

Event Details

Date/Time: 

Aug 19 2010 7:30pm - 9:30pm

Price: 

Suggested donation $10. Doors open at 7 pm.
Includes light refreshments. Seating is limited, RSVPs are suggested: 310.657.5511

Where: 

Levantine Cultural Center
5998 W. Pico Blvd.
Los Angeles CA 90035
ample street parking or across the street in the CVS underground lot (only till 10 pm)
one block east of Crescent Heights

an outtake from "Azi Ayima"Screening and Discussion of Azi Ayima (Come Mother) with director Sami Shalom Chetrit.

Israel 2009, 77 mins. Hebrew, Arabic and French w/ English subtitles.

The filmmaker embarks on a journey with his mother in search of classmates from her elementary school, the Alliance, which she attended 60 years ago in the little village of Gurama in the Tafilalt region of Morocco. Through their stories of past and present, Morocco is reconstructed and comes to life through vivid memories. It is a story of transition, cultural crisis, social survival and also lots of faith, optimism, joy and dignity, told for the first time by Moroccan women of the first generation to immigrate to Israel.

By Joyce Zonana

David ShashaBy David Shasha

Recently I was shopping at my favorite record store, Academy CDs in Manhattan, and purchased two CDs: one by the great African-American singer and activist Billie Holiday, the other by the legendary Egyptian singer Um Kulthum.

Um Kulthum
While many Americans will immediately recognize Billie Holiday, whose harrowing "Strange Fruit" described the lynching of blacks in the Jim Crow South and became a central part of the Civil Rights struggle, few Americans are familiar with the music of the greatest singer the modern Arab world has known.

In "Homage to a Belly-Dancer," an essay honoring the famous Egyptian belly dancer Tahia Carioca, Edward Said begins with a discussion of Um Kulthum that places her work in the proper perspective:

The greatest and most famous singer of the twentieth-century Arab world was Um Kalthoum, whose records and cassettes, fifteen years after her death, are available everywhere. A fair number of non-Arabs know about her too, partly because of the hypnotic and melancholy effect of her singing, partly because in the world-wide rediscovery of authentic people's art Um Kalthoum is a dominant figure. But she also played a significant role in the emerging Third World women's movement as a pious 'Nightingale of the East' whose public exposure was as a model not only of feminine consciousness but also of domestic propriety.

Event Details

Date/Time: 

Jun 20 2010 1:00pm - 5:00pm

Price: 

$40 in advance, $45 at the door ($36 members with advance RSVP)
Click here to buy tickets

Where: 

Levantine Cultural Center
5998 W. Pico Blvd.
Los Angeles CA 90035
Street parking
Located equidistant between Fairfax and La Cienega

a creative writing workshop

Levantine Cultural Center & The Writing Studio present Writing for Peace: War, Peace & the Path to Freedom. This workshop in creative writing with Elana Golden is for new and experienced writers—limited to 10 participants.

Turning wounds into literature is an act of self-preservation, self-discovery—a journey toward personal and global healing and peace. Elana Golden is a Los Angeles writer and teacher who works and corresponds with Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel. She has taught creative writing at Levantine Cultural Center for  the past two years. She has worked with new and established writers from many countries, including Iran, Iraq, Israel, Pakistan, Egypt and the United States.

Whether among nations, classes or families, the workshop provides a peaceful, respectful and inspiring space in which to write stories born of war, conflict or occupation. The skills of creative writing will be taught and explored, as well as effective methods to put aside the critical mind.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Jordan Elgrably, Nile El Wardani, Elie Karam
Levantine Cultural Center
310.657.5511 or 310.402.8866

[Los Angeles, May 20, 2010] Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's top aide, Special Representative to Muslim Communities Farah Pandith, will speak in a public forum on cultural diplomacy organized by the Levantine Cultural Center on Thursday, May 27, 2010, at 7 pm at the Mark Taper Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles.

The "clash of civilization" dialectic and the "war on terror" discourse require Americans to broaden our international outreach, to improve understanding of the Arab/Muslim world. In fact, the alchemy of change requires that we empathize with narratives that may differ from our own; and sometimes these narratives are strikingly similar. Cultural diplomacy efforts use the arts to address communities in conflict-or groups that appear to have opposing interests whether because of different religious traditions, political beliefs or ethnic identification.

By Jessica Proett

La Mezquita: Cordoba's CathedralDuring Easter Week in Spain, amid processions of Jesus swaying through cobblestone streets, a group of Muslim tourists knelt down on the marble floors of Cordoba's Mezquita. They began reciting verses from the Qur'an, their voices echoing off the multitude of red and white arches, until a security guard attempted to enforce the ban on Muslim prayer and was met with a punch in the face and a knife wound in his hand. The incident resulted in two arrests, two starkly different stories from the opposing sides in the scuffle, and a rapid-fire media frenzy and equally prolific blog-dialogue that is still snowballing.

Reviewed by Jordann Saliba Sullivan

In a time when the Middle East is portrayed as a hotbed of religious and ethnic conflict, the label "Arab Jew" seems like an oxymoron. From the beginning of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict onward, Arabs and Jews have been painted as separate, warring peoples, fighting over religion, land and even their place in history. Moreover, Israel has sufficiently demonized Arab culture as to have virtually eliminated the classification of "Arab Jew" from its modern lexicon. However, perhaps the two aren't as disparate as we've been led to believe.

Author Rachel Shabi's first book, We Look Like the Enemy: The Hidden Story of Israel's Jews from Arab Lands, eloquently combats the notion that Arabs and Jews are cut from a different cloth. Shabi was born in Israel to Iraqi parents, and grew up in the UK. Her book explores the little-discussed fate of "Mizrahi" Jews from Egypt, Morocco, Iraq, Yemen, and other Arab/Muslim nations who immigrated to Israel. Shabi critically yet thoughtfully examines the vast socio-economic disparity that characterizes the Mizrahi and European "Ashkenazi" experiences in Israel.