Movies at The Shelter

In celebration of the Lebanese general elections, The Shelter is screening works by award-winning Lebanese filmmakers Carol Mansour and Hani Tamba. The cinema at the shelter plays a wide array of films, independent movies, documentaries as well as event films. There is no fee to watch the movies. All movies start at 8.30pm. For more information, visit www.shelter.ae.

Carol Mansour is of Palestinian origin, educated in Montreal, Canada, and currently living in Beirut. Her work focuses on socio-economic issues such as migrant workers and child labor. Her films have won awards from various film festivals such as Jury’s Prize at the Institut du Monde Arab in Paris, Best Documentary at the Arab Film Festival in Rotterdam and in Darwin, Australia. More recently, her latest work “A Summer Not To Forget” received Best Short International Documentary at the New Zealand Festival.

Hany Tamba was born in Beirut. He studied graphic design in the UK and worked as a freelance illustrator in London for many years before moving on to directing. His film “After Shave” won the French Cesar for Best Short Feature in 2006 as well as numerous awards at festivals around the world. He has just completed his first full-length feature “Melodrama Habibi” (Une Chanson dans la Tete) and was released in France and Belgium on August 2008.

The synopsis of the films to be shown in June are featured below.

Tuesday 16th June 2009
Maid in Lebanon 2: Chronicles from Home
Carol Mansour

This is a documentary that explores the complexity of the relationship between migrant domestic workers and Lebanese households as employers in an honest, and at times humorous, and touching manner. This film chronicles the life of migrant women workers within the Lebanese society: their joys, their pains, their expectations, their deceptions and finally their humanity. This documentary also poses questions and suggests answers on workers rights, employment contracts and everyday terms and conditions of work. It emphasizes the importance of improving cross-cultural understanding and encouraging new patters of working relationships.

Tuesday 23rd June 2009
Invisible Children
Carol Mansour

Invisible Children, one of the few films on child labor in the country, provides a sensitive look into the tragic and triumphant lives of working children through personal interviews with the youth themselves. The young people take you on an emotional journey though their work, family lives and communities. Either invisible to the public eye or stigmatized as poor and uneducated, little has been previously known about their circumstances. Invisible Children explores the issues giving voice to the children usually ignored – not heard or seen. What the film finds is that although the youth are in exploitive situations, they are also survivors. They not only speak of their sadness but of their dreams and successes. Street smart, some give candid and provocative responses to the realities and state permissiveness of child labor. They show that that are individuals who have been born into poverty and forced to work, never able to experience what many know as the freedom and innocence of childhood. Yet they are also bright individuals who learn to cope despite the insurmountable odds, and despite the shame that surrounds the work that they do and their lack of formal education. This film chronicles their stories, their work, their failures and successes.

Tuesday 30th June
After Shave
Hany Tamba

Abou Milad is an old barber who lost his hairdressing salon during the Lebanese civil war. Nowadays, he earns his crust by cutting hair in the working class cafés of Beirut. One day, he is summoned by a recluse who lives in a grand bourgeois house.