When the Iraq Film Archives were destroyed by US bombs during the 2003 war, a journalist rescued eight scraps of celluloid from the wreckage, totalling 14.3 seconds. In 2004, ICARP (the Iraq Coalition Archives Restoration Project) announced that it intended to use these scraps to painstakingly reconstruct what was once considered the greatest collection of Arab Cinema in the world. Here are the first six restorations, including Al Mas' Ala Al-Kubra (Mohamed Shukri Jameel, 1983, an epic about the 1920’s uprising against British colonial rule, starring Yousef al-Any and Oliver Reed) and Al Ayyam Al-Tawila (Tewfik Saleh, 1980, based on an autobiographical novel by Saddam Hussein).
This film screens as part of this screening:
This screening is part of the larger thematic series:
- STEM Cell 2010 / Reeling Dance On Screen
- STEM Cell: Experimental Docs 1: Variations on the Home Movie
- Reeling: MZD's Bad Lands (Good Luck) (2010)
- Reeling: Sex, Death & Arabesque
- Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry (2008)
- Artist's Talk with Daniel Barrow @ The ARTery
- STEM Cell: Experimental Docs 2: Landscapes
- STEM Cell: Experimental Docs 3: The Medium of Media
- Reeling: Blush - A film by Ultima Vez (2004)
- STEM Cell: Experimental Docs 4: Memory
- Reeling: Gravity of Desire
- STEM Cell: Experimental Docs 5: Phenomenology & Perception

