Omar Amiralay
1944 - 2011وهناك أشياء كثيرة كان يمكن أن يتحدث عنها المرء...
Omar Amiralay
Saadallah Wannous
The film was based on an interview with the late dramatist Saadallah Wannous a few months before he died of cancer. Wannous narrates his somber and relentless reflections – an adieu to a generation for whom the Arab-Israeli conflict has been the source of all disillusion. The playwright recounts, with some regret for the lost opportunities that resulted, how the Palestinian struggle became a central part of intellectual life for an entire generation
There Are Many Things One Can Talk About...
Le plat de sardines
Omar Amiralay
Mohammad Malas
A man recollects the conflict in the middle east through his personal memory. In this short documentary, Amiralay reflects on the first time he heard of Israel. Through recorded conversations with filmmaker Mohamed Malas, both Amiralay and Malas share their own unique stories and experiences about Israel and Israeli occupation. In the company of fellow Syrian filmmaker Mohammad Malas, the ground-breaking director Omar Amiralay revisits the ruins of the destroyed Golan village of Quneytra, occupied by Israel and then abandoned following the 1973 war.
A Plate of Sardines
الحياة اليومية في قرية سورية
Omar Amiralay
The first documentary to present an unabashed critique of the impact of the Syrian government’s agricultural and land reforms, Everyday Life in a Syrian Village delivers a powerful jab at the state’s conceit of redressing social and economic inequities.
Everyday Life in a Syrian Village
الدجاج
Omar Amiralay
Through mordant social commentary and symbolic irony, Amiralay focuses this film on the chicken farming industry in the rural Syrian village of Sadad. He documents the burdened livelihoods of farmers and the economic policies of the government that encouraged industrial egg productions rather than artisanal trades, a switch that ultimately led to the plight of the Sadad's rural peasant class.
The Chickens
Moudarres
Omar Amiralay, Mohammad Malas
Fateh Moudarres (1922-1999) was a crucial personage in Syrian artistic and cultural life, a pioneer of contemporary painting, a literate and prolific novelist. For about forty years has transformed his atelier, located in the center of Damascus, into a place of encounter and dialogue on art. The film is a journey of love to the artist's universe, to his works composed from memories of light, colors, and the shadows of a painful existence.
Moudarres
Massa’ibu Qawmen
Omar Amiralay
Hajj Ali makes a living as a taxi driver during the day, carrying citizens safely across the city, but he also runs a funeral home, waiting for “customers” to be delivered daily. As he documents one man’s existence in a civil war-ravaged Beirut, Amiralay creates a tragicomic portrait of a society held captive by conflict.
The Misfortunes of Some
Nour wa Zilal
Omar Amiralay, Mohammad Malas
Trained as an electrician, Nazih Shahbandar became fascinated with the technology behind film production and was one of the pioneers of cinema production in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1947, he set up a studio fitted with film equipment that was almost entirely of his own fabrication. He wrote scripts, built sets, and innovated new methods of sound recording and transmission. As an enthusiastic inventor, he produced and directed the first Syrian film with sound. His dream was to film and screen a 3D film. An ode to cinema, this documentary is a portrait of Shahbandar.
Light and Shadows, the Last of the Pioneers: Nazih Shahbandar
الحب الموءود
Omar Amiralay
In the year leading up to a 1985 international conference on gender equality in Beijing, filmmakers all over the world took part in a series of documentary films exploring changing relationships between men and women. Amiralay, invited to explore the changing social and economic status of women in Egypt, chose his female protagonists from across classes—lawyers, actresses, domestic workers—and dared them to reveal the intricacies of their interior worlds.
Love Aborted
Par un jour de violence ordinaire, mon ami Michel Seurat...
Omar Amiralay
On 22nd May 1985, Jean-Paul Kaufman and Michel Seurat were kidnapped by the Islamic Jihad on the road to Beirut airport. Seurat died after 8 months of captivity.
On a Day of Ordinary Violence, My Friend Michel Seurat...
Film-Muhawalah 'An Sadd al-Furat
Omar Amiralay
The construction of a dam on the Euphrates River is an example of a country’s economic development. Through grandly composed images, rhythmic editing, and aestheticized details, the director demonstrates his admiration for the interwar avant-garde. The film is a celebration of the new, while at the same time showing a traditional way of life and calling attention to working conditions; it is a refrain-like evocation of an arid country that explores the difficult lot of Syria’s rural inhabitants.
Film-Essay on the Euphrates Dam
