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North Africa

Ibis Editions Reprints the Levant in Handsome Editions

Subtitle: 
Jerusalem publishing house features Arab and Jewish poets and writers


By Sarah Burke

Sadder Than Water: poems by Samih al-QasimSadder Than Water: poems by Samih al-QasimMaps

Several years ago I traveled in Tunisia with a friend. We felt pretty cool: we avoided the resorts, took local transport, ate local food, practiced our languages. One day we rolled into a town by the edge of the Sahara that is the starting point of many coordinated journeys into the desert—camels, sunset over the dunes, dinner cooked on a fire, etc. We had compared the reviews of several tour agencies in Lonely Planet and Rough Guide, volumes stored like talismans in our respective backpacks. As we emerged from the shared van into this new town, a man approached us and began talking about the agency he represented. It was the best, he said, the number one agency for trips into the desert.

I Am a Postcard

Subtitle: 
Artist Rheim Alkadhi shares a few gems in her colonial collection


I have been known to collect postcards of a particular variety. The typical postcard in my collection is made of paper, measures five and a half inches long by three and a half inches wide, and dates around the first few decades of the twentieth century. All of my postcards depict women of colonial North Africa and the Middle East.

2nd Annual Amazigh Film Festival at Barnsdall

Date/Time: 
Jan 10 2009 4:00pm - 10:30pm
Price: 
$17.00 ($9.00 under 12) in advance, $22.00 at the door ($11.00 under 12)
Where: 
Barnsdall Gallery Theatre and Park
4800 Hollywood Blvd. (just west of Vermont)
Hollywood CA 90038
Tickets available online at www.BGTtix.com
Amazigh Film FestivalAmazigh Film FestivalThe second annual Amazigh Film Festival, under the stewardship of director Helene Hagan, will present art, music and films of the Amazigh or Berber cultures of North Africa. Last year's event was highly successful and the second edition promises to be even more intriguing. Here's the schedule:

4:00-4:30 pm: Slideshow presentation, "Kabylia, the land, the people, the Arts" (10 min) - Welcome Address by Helene Hagan and presentation by Rachid Bouksim, Director of the Issni N'Ourgh Film Festival of Agadir, Morocco, on the recent development of the Amazigh Cinematography in Morocco.

4:30-6:30 pm: Documentaries "Pottery from the Rif" (27 min, 2003, Morocco, Dounia Productions, Ltd.) and "On Native Lands" (86 min, Canada/Morocco, 2007, Orbi xii).

6:30-7:30 pm: Art Exhibit and Reception with art by Moroccan artists Hassan Moumene (Atlas) and Abdallah Aourik (Souss). Traditional mint tea and tidbits catered by CHAMEAU, Inc. of Beverly Hills.

The Commotion in Cairo

Subtitle: 
a writer finds her characters

By Yasmine El-Rashidi

Cairo’s streets have always been sad. I have spent years traversing them, getting lost and familiar with alleyways littered with paper, saturated with smells and colors and a conflict of noise. Mothers and daughters call down to the greengrocers to fill their dangling baskets with goods. Young boys shout randomly into the hollow of the maze of buildings. Conversations take place across alleys, from balconies, from windows. Recipes are exchanged, news is shared, the call to prayer resonates. Sellers of all sorts call out the isms of slogans and sounds that make Cairo’s streets familiar to those who live them. Television filters out from every floor and the voracity of traffic chimes in with consistency. It is a commotion of life that I have perhaps only experienced to such intensity in India, where the air is inflated with ebullience and vivid colors appear to stream from the city’s pores of windows and doorways. In India there is exuberance. In Cairo, however, it feels quite different.

Fez Concert, Celebrating City's 1200 Years

Date/Time: 
Nov 15 2008 8:00pm
Price: 
Free
Where: 
UCLA - Royce Hall
Free, but tickets are required, available from the UCLA Central Ticket Office
310.825.2101 or cto@tickets.ucla.edu
Parking is also available for $9.00 per entry, Parking Kiosk on Westwood Blvd.
Fez: Queen of Cities

An evening of live music and dance at UCLA's Royce Hall

"What's the West's Problem With Islam?" A Zócalo Event at the Hammer

Date/Time: 
Nov 19 2008 7:00pm
Price: 
Free to the public
Where: 
UCLA-Hammer Museum
10899 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90024
Info 310.443.7000

Christopher Caldwell on "What is the West's Problem with Islam?"

Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West: your purchase benefits LCC programmingReflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West: your purchase benefits LCC programming Europe has received a wave of immigration from the global south in recent decades, similar in scope to the US-but very different in its results. Many immigrant and second-generation communities have astronomical unemployment rates and a thin connection to European identity. Some have produced terrorists. The problems are particularly severe among newcomers from the Muslim world.

If Europe has an Islam problem, whose fault is it? Is Islamic belief and culture incompatible with Western institutions? Or is there such a thing as "Islamophobia," poisoning immigrants' efforts to integrate on European terms?

Christopher Caldwell, who writes for the Financial Times, The New York Times Magazine and The Weekly Standard, visits Zócalo to talk about themes from his upcoming book, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West.

4th Annual God Loves Beauty Festival, an Arts & Interfaith Initiative

Date/Time: 
Nov 12 2008 7:00pm
Price: 
Free to the public. Some events $15.00
Where: 
Wilshire Boulevard Temple
3663 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles CA 90010
info 323.842.2869
Temple tel 213.388.2401

The 4th Annual God Loves Beauty Festival, Nov. 12-20, 2008

Radio Al-Fareed, Music of the Arab and Islamic World

Subtitle: 
the new weekly podcast by the inimitable L.A. deejay
The eclectic Al-Fareed aka Alfred Madain is a deejay, musician and ethnomusicologist in Los Angeles. A walking encyclopedia of traditional, folkloric and contemporary music of the Arab/Islamic world and Africa, he intimately “gets” and analyzes music ranging from ancient traditions to modern world techno, hip hop, western new wave, heavy metal and punk. Al-Fareed’s attuned feel for rock gives him the ability to reflect on the west from an eastern perspective and on the east from a western perspective. As a music historian he can explain the history and influence of ziryab (a musician of the Baghdadi and Andalusian courts) as well as the history and influence of Woody Guthrie, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Black Flag, Blind Lemon Jefferson, the Velvet Underground and more.

Mounir Fatmi, Paris-Based Moroccan Artist, Stirs Controversy

Artist Mounir FatmiArtist Mounir FatmiA multimedia artist born in Tangier, Morocco who divides his time between Paris and Tangier, Mounir Fatmi constructs visual spaces and linguistic games that aim to free the viewer from his/her preconceptions of politics and religion, and allow them to contemplate these and other subjects in new ways. His videos, installations, drawings, paintings and sculptures bring to light our doubts, fears and desires, directly addressing the current events of our world. Sometimes his work serves to both explicate the origins and symptoms of global issues as well as speak to those whose lives are affected by specific events.
An evocative work critical of corporal punishmentAn evocative work critical of corporal punishment

ARPA International Film Festival Oct. 24-26 at the Egyptian

Date/Time: 
Oct 24 2008 7:00pm - Oct 26 2008 11:00pm
Price: 
Where: 
Egyptian Theatre
6712 Hollywood Blvd.
Hollywood, CA 90028
For complete film schedule and tickets call 323.663.1882.


From October 24-26 in Hollywood, Arpa International Film Festival will screen 50 films from 21 nations, including Armenia, Australia, Canada, China, Congo, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Romania, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Tobago, Trinidad, Turkey, UK, and Venezuela.

Arpa International Film Festival
, which goes green in 2008, is produced by Arpa Foundation for Film, Music, and Art (AFFMA), a non-profit organization dedicated to artists exploring identity, multi-culturalism, war, exile, genocide and global empathy.