BOOK & DVD DRIVE CALLS FOR DONATED NEW & USED MATERIALS ON MIDDLE EAST/NORTH AFRICA FOR RESOURCE LIBRARY

The Levantine Cultural Center, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that champions a greater understanding of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), seeks to build a new library and resource center that will provide access to valuable research materials. The library will be open to the public beginning Monday, November 7, and will be available during regular center hours, Monday-Saturday, 10 am-6 pm.

Event Details

Date/Time: 

Sep 25 2011 8:00pm - 10:00pm

Price: 

General Admission: $35.00 VIP $65.00
(unreserved seating & post-concert reception with artists)
Click here to buy tickets
Doors open 7 pm, show 8 pm

Where: 

El Rey Theatre
5515 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA

By any measure, Niyaz has come very far, very fast. In 2005, along with vocalist Azam Ali and programmer/producer Carmen Rizzo, Loga Ramin Torkian founded the best-selling world music group Niyaz. Drawing on medieval Persian poetry and 300-year old Persian folk songs, Niyaz created a 21st century global trance tradition and quickly became a standout ensemble in a very crowded world music field.

Event Details

Date/Time: 

Sep 11 2011 5:00pm - 8:00pm

Price: 

Suggested donation $11 (students $5) includes light refreshments (no-one turned away for lack of funds) to benefit the center

Where: 

Levantine Cultural Center
5998 W. Pico Blvd
Los Angeles CA 90035
ample street parking
between La Cienega and Fairfax

Activists, artists, writers and members of the general public are invited to participate in a community roundtable discussion on the events of 9/11, including the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, the passing of the USA Patriot Act, the "war on terror," Islamophobia, the Green Movement in Iran in 2009, and this year's Arab Spring and just what we can look forward to in the months and years ahead.

Aslan Media (Staff Writer)

As summer quickly approaches, many of us will inevitably reminisce about years gone by. The end of school brought about warm evenings huddled with friends beneath a blanket of stars, singing folk tunes like "Cumbaya" or even Disney classics like "Hakuna Matata". At some point in between the campfire smores and gossip about the latest high school "crush," childhood delivered one of life's most poignant messages: the similarities we share are stronger than the differences that separate us.

Event Details

Date/Time: 

May 24 2011 7:30pm - 9:30pm

Price: 

$15 advance, $20 at the door
Buy Tickets

Where: 

Levantine Cultural Center
5998 W. Pico Blvd.
Los Angeles CA 90035
street parking or in the underground CVS lot (till 10 pm only)
located between La Cienega Blvd. and Fairfax Ave.

a Carpet Concert with Rowan Storm and friends celebrates the patterns that connect us with music from Armenia, Turkey, Greece, Iran, Arab lands, Spain and New York.

• Naser Musa — oud, voice
• Souren Baronian — duduk, gaval, G clarinet, percussion
• Rowan Storm — frame drums, voice
• Jim Grippo — kanun
• Far'ha — Middle Eastern dance with Sazandeh Women's Ensemble

Event Details

Date/Time: 

Apr 30 2011 2:30pm - 6:00pm

Price: 

Free to the public.

Where: 

Levantine Cultural Center
5998 W. Pico Blvd.
Los Angeles CA 90035
between La Cienega Blvd. & Fairfax Ave.
ample street parking or in the CVS underground lot

The American Middle Eastern Women's Leadership Coalition is a nonprofit, nonpartisan educational organization dedicated to enhance the skills of women leaders that are engaged in the awareness of our democratic principles, civic involvement and actively helping their community in the United States. We also want to assist women to become goodwill ambassadors using their heritage and language through cooperating with the women in the Middle East and other countries to help them become agents of positive change in their own communities.

Event Details

Date/Time: 

May 4 2011 8:00pm - 10:00pm

Price: 

Free to the public. Cash bar available. (UCLA parking $10)

Where: 

UCLA Royce Hall
340 Royce Drive
Los Angeles
visit uclalive.org

The Hammer Museum and UCLA Live present a free lecture featuring Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf with Reza Aslan at UCLA's Royce Hall. In his role as chairman of the Cordoba Initiative, Imam Feisal directs projects that aim to heal conflict between Islamic and Western communities. As Imam of Masjid al-Farah for 27 years, a mosque located twelve blocks from Ground Zero in New York City, he has preached a message of understanding among people of all faiths. One of his projects is the Cordoba House project in Lower Manhattan, which became a cause célèbre in 2010 and he became known as the ‘Ground Zero Mosque Imam.'

Event Details

Date/Time: 

Nov 18 2010 8:00pm - 9:30pm

Price: 

Free to the public, donations welcome, includes light refreshments

Where: 

Levantine Cultural Center
5998 W. Pico Blvd.
Los Angeles CA 90035
Between Fairfax and La Cienega (ample street parking)
doors open 7:30 pm

View From a Grain of Sand, the documentary by Meena Nanji, is presented in partnership with the Levantine Cultural Center and produced by Folk Art Everywhere, a project of the Craft and Folk Art Museum.

"searing, wide-reaching... an especially timely addition to the collective history of the plight of women under repression."—Los Angeles Times  

Shot in refugee camps of Pakistan and the war-torn city of Kabul, three remarkable Afghan women lead us through the maze of Afghanistan's complex history, informing this examination of how international interventions, war and the rise of political Islam have stripped Afghan women of their freedom over the last thirty years. Combining verité footage, interviews and rare archival material, this evocative film is a harrowing, thought-provoking and movingly intimate portrait of a still divided and brutalized nation. Addressing timely issues of women, Islam, and US foreign policy, the film is a compelling and vital addition to the global dialogue of our times.

—Staff Report

Author Kamran Pasha: at the Levantine Cultural CenterOn Sunday evening, September 12th, the Levantine Cultural Center hosted novelist Kamran Pasha, who talked about both his historical fictions, Mother of the Believers and Shadow of the Swords. The first novel is an imagined account, based on copious research, of Aisha and the Prophet Mohammed, one in which Aisha strikes us as an intelligent, liberated woman—a wife with a mind of her own—and the Prophet is revealed to be a progressive man of peace who was well ahead of his time. The second deals with the Crusades in the 12th century and strives to humanize Saladin, who has otherwise been turned into a legend of iconic proportions.