Public Screening and Discussion, Tuesday, November 19, 7:00 PM Communications 150 (Theater C)
In her directorial debut, Mary Jirmanus Saba deals with a forgotten revolution, saving from oblivion bloodily suppressed strikes at Lebanese tobacco and chocolate factories. These events from the 1970s, which held the promise of a popular revolution and, with it, of women’s emancipation were erased from
collective memory by the country’s civil wars. Rich in archival footage from Lebanon’s militant cinema tradition, the film reconstructs the spirit of that revolt, asking of the past how we might transform the present. FIPRESCI International Critics Prize Winner at the 2017 Berlinale Forum. – Malgorzata Sadowska.
Mary Jirmanus Saba is a geographer who uses film and other media to explore labor movement histories, connections among unstable landscapes and legacies of colonialism in the Arab World, Latin America and Turtle Island and the everpresent resilience of everyday life. Her debut feature film A Feeling Greater Than Love (2017) premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival Forum where it received the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize, making several “Best of 2017” lists. From 2006-2008, she produced the community broadcast television program, Via Comunidad with art collective Vientos del Sur in Ibarra, Ecuador. An avid producer of anonymous and collective agitprop, her latest film Mahdi Amel in Gaza (2024) is screening in community spaces, protest sites, and sometimes festivals. Saba is a member of UAW Labor for Palestine, the People’s CDC and a UC Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Santa Cruz in Film and Digital Media.
Following the screening, Mary Jirumanus Saba will be present for a Q&A moderated by Professor Peter Limbrick, author of Arab Modernism as World Cinema (2020).
Preceded by Workshop Monday, November 18, 4-7 PM, Communications 139
***RSVP to ilusztig@ucsc.edu to join***
In this workshop, filmmaker and scholar Mary Jirmanus Saba will discuss her recent work on films made in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, exploring the emergence of the “character driven resilience documentary.” Using her own work as an example, Saba will facilitate a discussion about the political economy of arts funding and social movements.
event co-sponsored by Center for the Middle East and North America and Film & Digital Media Department
By request, please wear a mask to both of these events.