Anthology Film Archives
32 2nd Ave, New York
Thursday, March 28, 2024
7 pm

The sixth installment of our ongoing film series at Anthology Film Archives where we will be screening two documentaries from Omar Amiralay: A Plate of Sardines (1998), in which Amiralay and Mohammad Malas visit the ruins of the Golan village of Quneitra, destroyed by the Israeli army in 1974, its only remaining building a former cinema; and The Man With the Golden Soles (2000), where Amiralay wrestles with both self and subject in his precarious portrait of billionaire Lebanese statesman Rafic Hariri, five years before his assassination.

The films will be introduced by writer, editor, and film programmer Hicham Awad.

Omar Amiralay
The Man With the Golden Soles
2000, 54 min, digital
Arabic and English 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 adverserial 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.

Omar Amiralay
A Plate Of Sardines (or the First Time I Heard of Israel)
1998, 17 min, digital
Arabic and French 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.