Anthology Film Archives
32 2nd Ave, New York
Thursday, September 19 at 7:30 pm
Sunday, September 22 at 3:30
Join us Thursday, September 19 or Sunday, September 22 at the Anthology Film Archives for a very special 35mm screening of Farouk Beloufa’s elliptical political drama Nahla (1979), followed by Jocelyne Saab’s behind-the-scenes documentary On the Set of Nahla (1979)—newly subtitled in English and screening in the US for the first time.
*September 19th screening will be introduced by artist, filmmaker, and progeny, Neïl Beloufa.
Nahla
Farouk Beloufa
1979, 116 min, 35mm
Arabic and French with English subtitles
Archival print courtesy Academy Film Archive
Shot in 1978 but set three years earlier in 1975, Nahla follows the intertwined stories of four characters in Beirut at the onset of the Lebanese Civil War. Nahla, a young singer who loses her voice; her sister Maha, a feminist journalist; Hind, a Palestinian activist who provides a channel to the camps and later joins the resistance; and Larbi, an Algerian journalist caught in the tumult. An elliptically structured political drama, Nahla’s narrative linearity is propelled only by real-life political events: the battle of Kfar Chouba, a meeting between Kissinger and Sadat, the assassinations of Maarouf Saad and Saudi King Faisal, and so on. Co-written with Rachid Boudjedra and produced by Radio Télévision Algérienne, Nahla is the product of a distinct 1970s pan-Arab leftist intellectualism which connected Algeria, Lebanon, Palestine, and beyond. With music composed by Ziad Rahbani, who makes cameos in the film.
On the Set of Nahla
Jocelyne Saab
1979, 27 min, 16mm-to-DCP
Arabic and French with English subtitles
“In the mid-1970s, Algeria was very interested in what was happening in Lebanon, particularly because the PLO headquarters were in Beirut, and the Palestinian issue is a central concern for the Arab world … I remember that some senior leaders of the National Liberation Front (FLN) began to wonder if a kind of civil war similar to the one that ignited Lebanon would come to pass in Algeria. I was invited … to present my documentary at the Cinematheque of Algiers, which was then a hotbed of global cinephilia … I had interesting discussions with Algerian filmmakers, like Farouk Beloufa, who discovered Lebanon through my films. Shortly thereafter, he shot Nahla… . Farouk was fascinated by the freedom of speech and movement and the proliferation of ideas of political parties in Lebanon in the seventies.” —Jocelyne Saab
A behind-the-scenes documentary in which director Jocelyne Saab engages the cast and crew of Nahla in conversations about the film. With Farouk Beloufa, Yasmine Khlat, Ahmed Mehrez, Jocelyne Saab, Youcef Saïeh, Lina Tebbara, and others.