A PLATE OF SARDINES, OR THE FIRST TIME I HEARD OF ISRAEL
(LE PLAT DE SARDINES)
1998, 17 min, video. In Arabic with English subtitles.
“The first time I heard of Israel, I was in Beirut, the conversation was about a plate of sardines. I was six years old, Israel was two.” In the company of filmmaker Mohammad Malas, Omar Amiralay revisits the ruins of the destroyed village of Quneitra.

Omar Amiralay
THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN SOLES
(AL RAJOL THOU AL-NAAL AL-THAHABI / L’HOMME AUX SEMELLES D’OR)
2000, 54 min, video. In Arabic and French with English subtitles.
Amiralay’s portrait of billionaire Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri was, by his own admission, a failure: “What I feared would happen had indeed happened…Hariri was now in complete control.” His leftist peers had tried to warn him (“You know very well that power is pernicious”) but Amiralay nevertheless enters into a dialectical struggle with Hariri in a series of one-on-one interviews. Unable to circumvent his subject’s charisma, Amiralay’s adversarial intentions slowly give way to familiarity as Hariri – often referring to himself in the third person – increasingly appears to be directing from in front of the camera. Featuring Elias Khoury, Fawwaz Traboulsi, and Samir Kassir.

Total running time: ca. 75 min.

Introduced by Hicham Awad. Awad is a writer, editor, and film programmer living in New York. He has recently lectured on the British films of Jerzy Skolimowski; led seminars and workshops on the writings of Serge Daney and Jean-Louis Schefer; and programmed a screening of Borhane Alaouié’s It Is Not Enough for God to Be with the Poor (1978). Hicham teaches film studies at The Cooper Union and is Managing Editor of e-flux Books.

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