Levantine Cultural Center Presents

New Voices in Middle Eastern Cinema Series

THE SECRET OF THE GRAIN
A film by Abdellatif Kachiche

What: The Secret of the Grain (2008)
French, Arabic, and Russian with English subtitles. 151 minutes

When: January 21, 2010 at 7:00 p.m.
Film to be followed by a Q & A discussion and refreshments.

Where: Levantine Cultural Center @
The Goethe-Institut Cinema
5750 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 100
Los Angeles CA 90036
(free parking after 6 pm)

Details: Tickets $12 general public/$10 LCC members

MOVIE SYNOPSIS: In this complex and moving portrait of a North African immigrant family in the south of France, aging protagonist Slimane Beiji is a divorced father down on his luck who seeks to change his fortunes by opening his own restaurant, serving his ex-wife's famous fish couscous. The family rallies around him, despite the financial hurdles they must overcome and the racial and class discrimination from local officials.

"La Graine et le Mulet" by Abdellatif KachicheLevantine Cultural Center presents an exclusive screening and discussion of the critical hit that took France by storm in 2008, winning a César for Best Film, from writer/director Abdellatif Kachiche (Tunisia). 

In this complex and moving portrait of a North African immigrant family in a southern French city, aging protagonist Slimane Bejii is a divorced father down on his luck who seeks to change his fortunes by opening his own restaurant, serving his ex-wife's famous fish couscous. The family rallies around this common cause, despite the financial hurdles they must overcome, and the racial and class discrimination from local officials.

"The Secret of the Grain" is an extraordinary film from Tunisian-born writer/director Abdellatif Kachiche whose cinematic eye successfully enters into the most intimate parts of his characters in a style akin to Italian Neo-Realist films of the 1940s and 1950s. Little wonder the film picked up a César for Best Film and appeared on numerous critics' top ten lists for 2008, including that of A.O. Scott of the New York Times.

A post-film audience discussion will be led by Levantine Cultural Center's artistic director, Jordan Elgrably, whose family emigrated from Morocco to France, and Pani Norindr, Associate Professor of French & Comparative Literature, and Chair of the department of Comparative Literature at USC. Dr. Norindr received his doctorate in Romance Languages and Literatures from Princeton University. He is the author of Phantasmatic Indochina: French Colonial Ideology in Architecture, Film, and Literature (Duke University Press). He focuses his research on French, Francophone, and Southeast Asian cinema. He has recently published an essay on Rachid Bouchareb's "Days of Glory" in Yale French Studies.

Tickets available here online, or at the door but subject to availability (space is limited).

"The Secret of the Grain" is the first in Levantine Cultural Center's series this year, "New Voices in Middle Eastern Cinema", which takes place the third Thursday of each month. The February selection on Feb. 19, 2010 is Amin Matalqa's "Captain Abu Raed."

Read a review of this highly-lauded film in the Levantine Review.

American edition of UnveiledSome women dream of marrying a prince, and in this memoir, a Lebanese-American from Long Island nearly does exactly that. After she comes to her senses, however, she instead winds up with a Palestinian politico under Arafat.

Author Deborah Kanafani shares a story that would be-among other things-any parent's nightmare, for Unveiled is a captivating page-turner that in some parts reads like a spy thriller replete with stories of intrigue, espionage, glamour, and romance. Dramatically played out against a backdrop of Middle Eastern conflicts, invasions, occupations, and uprisings, Kanafani's life story rolls out in a chronological order that elicits feelings of camaraderie in a plot gone wrong.

West Coast Tour for Alia Malek's "A Country Called Amreeka"The documenting of Arab American history is still in its infancy stage, despite the fact that Arabs have been immigrating to the United States for centuries. Just this week, on October 17, the Arab American Historical Society held what was its fourth annual conference on the subject at USC.

Following Gregory Orfalea’s 2006 The Arab Americans (Olive Branch Press), New York-based civil rights attorney Alia Malek has written a new volume that merits wide attention. A Country Called Amreeka: Arab Roots, American Stories, presents a range of individuals and families across the country, from the uplifting story of Alabama football hero Ed Salem to the unfortunate saga of Palestinian American Alex Odeh, who was assassinated in Orange County by a bomb blast in his office in 1985. This sad chapter in Arab American history worsened when eight Arab Americans were haunted by the FBI and threatened with deportation (known as the “L.A. 8,” all charges were dropped years later, in the post-9/11 era).

West Coast Tour for Alia Malek's "A Country Called Amreeka"The documenting of Arab American history is still in its infancy stage, despite the fact that Arabs have been immigrating to the United States for centuries. Just last month, the Arab American Historical Society held what was its fourth annual conference on the subject at USC.

Following Gregory Orfalea’s 2006 The Arab Americans (Olive Branch Press), New York-based civil rights attorney Alia Malek has written a new volume that merits wide attention. A Country Called Amreeka: Arab Roots, American Stories, presents a range of individuals and families across the country, from the uplifting story of Alabama football hero Ed Salem to the unfortunate saga of Palestinian American Alex Odeh, who was assassinated in Orange County by a bomb blast in his office in 1985. This sad chapter in Arab American history worsened when eight Arab Americans were haunted by the FBI and threatened with deportation (known as the “L.A. 8,” all charges were dropped years later, in the post-9/11 era).

The documenting of Arab American history is still in its infancy stage, despite the fact that Arabs have been immigrating to the United States for centuries. Just this week, on October 17, the Arab American Historical Society held what was its fourth annual conference on the subject at USC.

A Country Called AmreekaWhat does American history look and feel like in the eyes and skin of Arab Americans? In A Country Called Amreeka:  Arab Roots, American Stories (Free Press; October 6, 2009; $25.00), Syrian-American civil right lawyer Alia Malek weaves the stories of the Arab-American community (3.5 million strong) into the story of America, using lively and moving narratives of real people who have lived history all around the country.  Just as the recent award-winning National Geographic Entertainment film AMREEKA, by Cherien Dabis, blazed new ground in its depiction of a mother and son from the West Bank trying to assimilate in America, Alia Malek’s In A Country Called Amreeka brings to captivating life true stories of a wide variety of Arab Americans navigating the divide between their original heritage and their new world in the United States.

Using film, music and scholarship, on August 5th, speakers will explore the Mizrahim (Eastern Jews):

• Are the Jews of the Middle East/North Africa as Arab or Iranian as their host nationalities?
• 
  How were they received in Israel?
• 
  Are the Mizrahim/Sephardim a missing link to Middle East peace?

Using film, music and scholarship, on August 5th, speakers will explore the Mizrahim (Eastern Jews):