SYRIA NEWS | ZAMAN ALWSL

‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’ wins Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize at Venice Film Festival

Sun, 07 Sep 2025 11:26:21 +0300

The Voice of Hind Rajab, recounting the final moments of a five-year-old girl killed by Israeli forces in Gaza City last year, won the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday.

The movie by Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania is a true-life drama about the killing of the 5-year-old Palestinian girl during Israel’s ongoing invasion of the Gaza Strip.

The movies received a 23-minute standing ovation at its premier at the Venice Film Festival last week.

US independent director Jim Jarmusch’s gentle comedy about families and ageing, “Father Mother Sister Brother,” won the prestigious Golden Lion award at the Festival.

Film on Palestinian girl Hind Rajab receives record 23-minute ovation at Venice premiere

Thu, 04 Sep 2025 17:08:00 +0300

The sound of loud applause and chants of “Free, Free Palestine” against the backdrop of Palestinian flags filled the room as the feature film, The Voice of Hind Rajab, recounting the final moments of a five-year-old girl killed by Israeli forces in Gaza City last year, received a 23-minute standing ovation at its premier at the Venice Film Festival.

The emotional docudrama by Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania, features the actual recordings of Rajab pleading for help during a phone call with medics, before the vehicle she was in was reportedly hit with over 300 bullets.

The five-year-old Palestinian girl was killed by Israeli soldiers in January 2024 alongside six of her family members. Hind and her family had been fleeing Gaza City when Israeli forces shelled their vehicle, killing her uncle, aunt and three cousins.

Hind and her cousin had initially survived and contacted the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) by phone from the car to seek help. The car was later found with Hind and the paramedics who had come to help, all shot dead. The incident sparked global protest, including at Columbia University, where students renamed Hamilton Hall as Hind’s Hall.

Israeli officials denied their involvement, saying an initial investigation showed that troops were not present in the area where Hind and other family members were killed. The statement contradicted the circulating phone call between Rajab and PRCS, who accused Israel of deliberately targeting the medical team.

In original recordings taken from the attack on January 29, 2024, Rajab is heard sobbing and telling the PRCS, “Please come to me, please come. I’m scared,” while bullets were fired in the background.

Speaking about her film ahead of the premiere, director Ben Hania said: “I cannot accept a world where a child calls for help and no one comes. That pain, that failure, belongs to all of us.”

“I believe that fiction (especially when it draws from verified, painful, real events) is cinema’s most powerful tool. More powerful than the noise of breaking news or the forgetfulness of scrolling. Cinema can preserve a memory. Cinema can resist amnesia,” she said.

Hind’s mother, Wissam Hamada, told the AFP news agency that she hoped the film would help end the war.

“The whole world has left us to die, to go hungry, to live in fear and to be forcibly displaced without doing anything,” Hamada told AFP by phone from Gaza City, where she lives with her five-year-old son.

Lebanon mourns iconic composer Ziad Rahbani as mother Fayrouz makes rare appearance

AP — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 16:10:50 +0300

Hundreds of people in Lebanon paid tribute Monday to iconic composer, pianist, and playwright Ziad Rahbani, who died over the weekend. His mother, Fayrouz, one of the Arab world’s most esteemed singers, made a rare public appearance. Rahbani, also known as a political provocateur, died Saturday at age 69.

The cause of death was not immediately known.

His passing shocked much of the Arab world, which appreciated his satire, unapologetic political critique, and avant-garde jazz-inspired compositions that mirrored the chaos and contradictions of Lebanon throughout its civil war from 1975 until 1990. He also composed some of his mother’s most famous songs.

The Rahbani family was a cornerstone in Lebanon’s golden era of music theater that today is steeped in idealism and nostalgia in a troubled country.

Top Lebanese political officials and artists paid tribute after the death was announced. Rahbani, a leftist Greek Orthodox, often mocked Lebanon’s sectarian divisions in his work.

Hundreds of people holding roses and photos gathered by Khoury Hospital near Beirut’s busy Hamra district, solemnly singing some of his most famous songs and applauding as a vehicle carrying his body left its garage.

Reem Haidar, who grew up during the civil war, said Rahbani’s songs and their messages were what she and others associated with at a time when there was no nation to belong to.

The vehicle made its way to a church in the mountainous town of Bikfaya before burial in the family cemetery. Fayrouz, 90, had spent many years away from the public eye. Wearing black sunglasses and a black veil, she greeted visitors who came to pay respects.

She had not been seen publicly since photos surfaced of her meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, who visited her residence in 2020 to award her France’s highest medal of honor. In recent years, Rahbani also appeared less in the public eye, yet his influence never waned.

Younger generations rediscovered his plays online and sampled his music in protest movements. He continued to compose and write, speaking often of his frustration with Lebanon’s political stagnation and decaying public life. Rahbani is survived by his mother and his sister, Reema, and brother, Hali.

Ziad Rahbani, Lebanese composer and son of icon Fayrouz, dies at 69

AP — Sat, 26 Jul 2025 16:07:00 +0300

Ziad Rahbani, the visionary Lebanese composer, playwright, pianist and political provocateur, died on Saturday, at the age of 69, according to the state-run National News Agency.

The death was confirmed by a person close to Rahbani who spoke on condition of anonymity. The cause of death was not immediately clear.

Born in 1956 in Antelias, near Beirut, Ziad was the eldest son of legendary Lebanese singer Fayrouz and composer Assi Rahbani, one half of the famed Rahbani Brothers.

From a young age, he showed signs of prodigious talent, composing his first musical work at just 17 years old. Raised among artistic royalty, his world was steeped in music, theater, and political consciousness — a combination that would define his life’s work.

His mother performed some of his compositions at her sellout concerts, blending Lebanese folklore with Western syncopation and phrasing.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun mourned Rahbani’s passing as a national loss, describing him as “not just an artist, but a complete intellectual and cultural phenomenon.” In a statement, Aoun praised Rahbani as “a living conscience, a rebellious voice against injustice, and an honest mirror reflecting the suffering and marginalized.”

He highlighted how Rahbani’s fusion of classical, jazz and Oriental music “opened new windows for Lebanese cultural expression” and elevated it to global levels. “Ziad was a natural extension of the Rahbani family, which gave Lebanon much beauty and dignity,” the president added.

While his parents helped construct a golden era of Lebanese musical theater steeped in idealism and nostalgia, Rahbani charged onto the scene with irreverent satire, unflinching political critique and jazz-inflected scores that mirrored the chaos and contradictions of a Lebanon at war with itself.

His breakout play, Nazl el-Sourour (Happiness Hotel), premiered in 1974 when he was only 17 and portrayed a society disfigured by class inequality and repression. The tragicomic narrative follows a group of workers who hijack a restaurant to demand their rights, only to be dismissed by the political elite. With this bold debut, Rahbani revealed his enduring theme: that Lebanese society was fractured not only by war but by entrenched power.

Rahbani’s subsequent plays solidified his reputation as the voice of the disenchanted. In Bennesbeh Labokra Chou? (What About Tomorrow?), he plays a jaded bar pianist in post-civil war Beirut who drifts through a surreal landscape of broken dreams, corruption and absurdity. The work features some of Rahbani’s most poignant music and biting commentary, including the famous line, “They say tomorrow will be better, but what about today?”

More than just a playwright, Rahbani was a composer of staggering range. He infused traditional Arabic melodies with jazz, funk and classical influences, creating a hybrid sound that became instantly recognizable. His live performances were legendary, whether playing piano in smoky clubs in Hamra, one of Beirut’s major commercial districts that harbors a multifaceted identity, or orchestrating large-scale productions.

His collaborations with Fayrouz, especially during the late 1970s and 1980s, ushered in a darker, more politically charged phase in her career. Songs like Ouverture 83, Bala Wala Chi (Without Anything), and Kifak Inta (How Are You) reflected Ziad’s brooding compositions and lyrical introspection.

Rahbani came under fire from Arab traditionalists for his pioneering efforts to bridge the gap between Arab and Western culture with music.

If Only We Were Like Ants is a Syrian narrative told through children torn apart by war

Zaman Al Wasl — Sat, 15 Mar 2025 09:20:00 +0300

"These children could have gathered in one classroom to talk about their dreams and aspirations, but bullets, shelling, and death made this meeting possible only on the pages of this book."

With these words, al-Kheder Al-Khalifa introduces his new narrative book, "If Only We Were Like Ants - Children Scattered by the Bullets of Battle and Brought Together by a Book." In it, he relays the diverse stories of ten children from villages in northern Syria who have experienced the tragedies of loss, displacement, and submission to harsh conditions imposed by various military and political forces, leaving them no room for choice and without any responsibility for their families' decisions.

Al-Kheder told Zaman Al-Wasl that the idea for his book stemmed from a story he told of a child, Thamer, who lived in a village controlled by multiple factions. He entered the village in a car that didn't bear any flag of any faction or group. He met the child selling diesel and was terrified of the car. That's when, he says, a story came to mind about how children see us, especially in areas of displacement.

Al-Kheder noted that he was unable to visit all of Syria's regions because he was banned from doing so to gather material for his book. He tried to be fair and impartially convey what these children witnessed between 2011 and 2020, even if he didn't agree with their views. He conveyed them because children in these environments believe in them. An Imaginary Classroom

Al-Kheder, as he says, based his book on the idea of an imaginary classroom for Syrian children. An event occurs, forcing them to disperse and flee, each with their family. The classroom remains empty. Like a village tourist, he began touring Syrian villages and displacement camps, gathering these children in an "imaginary, forced" way to return them to their classrooms. There, they talked about the dreams they had that night, the food they ate, and their plans for their supposed summer trip: where they would go, their future ambitions, and their relationship with their country. But the raining bullets, the schools bombed by airstrikes, the schools transformed into prisons and military headquarters, and the political and religious views of their parents prevented these children from actually meeting in one classroom.

The book began with the idea that in order for justice to be achieved, we must listen to each other carefully. Throughout the book, each child begins to narrate what they saw and how the other sees and sees the country. Al-Kheder hinted that among his child heroes were a girl trapped in Kafriya and al-Fu'ah, and another He was trapped in Douma, and a third died as a result of the earthquake that struck Syria and Turkey in February 2023. Some of them had fathers with ISIS, others with Hezbollah militias or with the Syrian Democratic Forces. There was also a child whose leg was amputated as a result of a COD missile, and how he lived and adapted to his disability.

And there is "Karim," the child of the tunnels and the parallel world, who died as a result of the earthquake that struck his town of Jandaris in February 2023. Although he died, he was not buried. Rather, his spirit lives on, roaming other places and worlds, seeing others like him who were not buried, like the missing.

If Only We Were Like Ants

Regarding the connotations and symbolism of the title of his book, "If Only We Were Like Ants," Al-Kheder explained that the title was inspired by a word from one of his child heroes, "Obeid," a dark-skinned man from the Jabal Badro neighborhood east of Aleppo. He was injured by a Scud missile in 2013, and while watering his amputated leg, he believed it would grow back. He made himself a crutch from an olive tree. His aunt also bullied him for his dark skin. When he saw ants living in harmony and adapting, he wished that we, as Syrians, could all be like ants, so that there would be no discrimination between the components of Syrian society, nor racism or class differences within it.

Regarding his message in writing this book, the author indicated that he wanted to emphasize that the battles of adults grind down children who are not to blame. In the midst of war, everyone believed they were the guardian and defender of the truth, but the world of children is different, and they have eyes that see with impartiality what other adults cannot.

Al-Kheder is a Syrian photographer and writer who travels Syrian villages, collecting and rewriting the stories of witnesses. He holds a bachelor's degree in psychology and a master's degree in urban marketing. He won the Lebanese Samir Kassir Award for Journalism in the opinion article category in 2017 and the Fetisov Journalism Award for Journalism in 2021.

By Fares Al-Rifai

At Istanbul church, blessed spring offers hope to Christians and Muslims

AFP — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 12:42:08 +0300

The queue outside Istanbul’s Our Lady of Vefa church stretched more than 200 metres, made up of Christians and Muslims chatting animatedly as they waited to make a wish inside this Greek Orthodox sanctuary.

It was a scene which plays out on the first day of every month at this ancient house of worship hidden behind a high wall topped with a metal fence and known in Turkish as “the first-of-the-month church.”

“We came before with friends and every one of our wishes came true!” said Emine Sanli, a Muslim woman who believes she was cured of a problem with her hands after drinking water from a spring under the church that is blessed by a priest.

“But it’s the first time I’ve seen such a large crowd. Perhaps it’s because the economy is so bad,” grinned Sanli, 58.

At the entrance, the visitors, mostly women, bought small keys and offerings, each symbolizing a different wish: health, inner peace, money, success, marriage, fertility and even “never-ending love”.

A Georgian tourist who also came last year walked alongside the queue handing out sweets to those in line -- a Muslim tradition.

“When wishes are coming true... you have to come and give sweets to the people,” said 35-year-old Tamar Khurtsidze with a smile.

‘Different faiths, all God’s children’

For Aysun Zirhli, 49, there is nothing strange in a Muslim making a wish at a church.

“We can all have different religions, but we’re all children of God,” she said while chosing a sweet.

Inside the church, each person stuck to their own religious practices, whether by crossing themselves like Christians or praying with their hands open like Muslims.

Descending steps into an underground chapel, a man bent to fill a bottle with holy water from a row of taps set in marble.

There, a sign encourages visitors to wash their hands and face, but not their feet -- a common Muslim practice.

Father Hieronymos Sotirelis of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople said the church’s appeal had “transcended religious boundaries”.

“The presence of pilgrims from different backgrounds serves to show that we can truly coexist despite, or even because of our cultural, linguistic, religious, and ideological differences,” he told AFP.

The large crowd surprised passers-by in a city where churches have often fallen into disuse or been converted into mosques, such as the illustrious Byzantine basilica Hagia Sophia in 2020 and the Holy Saviour church in Chora earlier this year.

Although Christians were an important minority under the Ottoman Empire, today they represent an estimated 0.2 percent of Turkey’s 85-million-strong population -- their numbers depleted by the Armenian genocide, massacres of Assyrians and Black Sea Pontic Greeks, population exchanges and pogroms.

‘Good for religions to come together’

Our Lady of Vefa is an eloquent testimony to the multicultural past of Istanbul, former capital of the Roman Empire when it was known as Constantinople.

“This tradition of sharing a space is a long tradition that has stayed from empires, because the empires brought together so many different peoples,” said Karen Barkey, chair of sociology and religion at Bard College in New York.

She said there are many similar “shared sacred sites” around the Mediterranean.

Among them are churches, synagogues and Muslim sanctuaries which have “survived the kind of nationalism that wants to homogenize, that wants everybody in their own spaces”.

“Turkey is really not an exemplary case of religious coexistence anymore. It used to be in the Ottoman Empire, but today it’s not,” reflected Barkey, who was born in Istanbul but no longer lives there.

She put that down to the Turkish state’s desire to fill people’s minds with “this Sunni homogeneous ideology” to the detriment of both Christians and the country’s millions of Alevi Muslims, whose rites differ from orthodox Islam.

Not everyone buys into the idea of a homogenous religious identity.

“I’m a Muslim, but I believe in all religions, so I visit all places of worship,” said 50-year-old fashion designer Serkan Esen.

“Given the current state of the world, I think it’s good to come to places like this and see so many people and religions coming together.”

8 Israelis injured as Hezbollah targets military site in northern border area

AA — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 12:37:40 +0300

Lebanese group Hezbollah said early Thursday that it had attacked an Israeli military site near the Lebanese-Israeli border, injuring at least eight Israelis.

In a statement, Hezbollah said its fighters had targeted a deployment of Israeli soldiers in the vicinity of the Al-Marj military site.

The Israeli public broadcaster KAN said eight Israelis were injured, including two in serious condition, by two anti-tank missiles fired from Lebanon at the Upper Galilee area.

Separately, the Israeli army said its fighter jets carried out overnight raids across southern Lebanon, claiming to have struck Hezbollah buildings and military infrastructure.

According to a military statement, the warplanes struck what it called military buildings used by Hezbollah in the southern towns of Chihine, Blida, Mays al-Jabal, Aitaroun, and Kfar Kela.

It added that a Hezbollah weapons depot was also struck by a drone in the town of Khiam.

Israel remains on high alert in anticipation of a response from Hezbollah following two waves of communication device blasts on Tuesday and Wednesday that killed dozens of Lebanese across Lebanon and injured thousands, including Hezbollah members.

The blasts came amid an escalation in cross-border warfare between Israel and Hezbollah since the start of Israel’s deadly war on the Gaza Strip, which has killed over 41,200 people, mostly women and children, following a cross-border attack by Hamas last Oct. 7.

Ancient Syrian city of Bosra struggles to preserve precious heritage

Xinhua — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 16:29:22 +0300

by Hummam Sheikh Ali

BOSRA, Syria, June 24 (Xinhua) -- The ancient city of Bosra in southern Syria, a testament to civilizations spanning millennia, is locked in a new battle -- preserving the precious heritage from the ravage of yearslong war.

Enlisted in the UNESCO World Heritage Sites, Bosra's history dates back to 1500 BC, with Nabateans, Romans, Byzantines, and Islamic Caliphates all leaving their mark. Today, the city boasts a well-preserved Roman theater, a panoramic citadel, and a unique mosque, alongside temples, baths, and ancient city walls.

During Roman rule in the second century AD, Bosra rose to prominence as the regional capital. Alaa Al-Salah, director of the Bosra Archaeological Site, described a meticulously planned city mirroring Rome itself, complete with a grid layout, roads, theaters, a hippodrome, and baths.

But Syria's brutal war, which ravaged countless cultural treasures, left its mark on Bosra. Situated in the heart of the southern province of Daraa, the birthplace of the conflict, Bosra became a battleground. In 2012, UNESCO, recognizing the ongoing risk, placed Bosra on the List of World Heritage in Danger.

This designation stipulates the Syrian government to put in more effort to preserve the precious archaeological site and prolonged endangerment can lead to removal from the World Heritage Sites.

Since 2019, with the area secured, restoration efforts have begun. Al-Salah, who has overseen the site for 25 years, emphasized the urgency. "Being on the endangered list for too long can lead to delisting," he said, lamenting the potential loss of such a valuable treasure.

Syria's antique authorities, hamstrung by limited resources and expertise, have prioritized the theater and the castle for restoration. While progress has been made, vast swathes of Bosra remain in ruin, a stark reminder of the conflict's brutality.

"Restoring the city requires greater effort and more assistance, which we have not received," said Al-Salah, adding their efforts can only take the restoration project so far.

He also pleaded for greater international cooperation, particularly for tasks requiring heavy machinery and advanced techniques.

Aside from the lack of financial resources, one of the main challenges was restrictions on international cooperation due to sanctions imposed by the United States and its Western allies, according to Al-Salah.

The sanctions have crippled the cultural sector and restoration efforts, Al-Salah said, adding that "restrictions on foreign missions and organizations further hinder progress."

Mohammad Mustafa accepts task to form 19th Palestinian government

AA — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 15:36:00 +0300

Palestinian Prime Minister-designate Mohammad Mustafa on Friday accepted the task of forming a new government.

“The Prime Minister-designate accepted in a letter sent to the president tonight his assignment to form the 19th government as specified in the law and to pursue extensive consultations for its approval for ratification by the president,” the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported, a day after Mustafa's appointment by President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday.

“I am honored to accept this assignment and recognize the seriousness of the stage that the Palestinian cause is going through, the difficult conditions inflicted upon our steadfast people and the existing challenges faced, particularly in light of the repercussions of the ongoing months-long Israeli aggression against our people,” he added.

Mustafa reaffirmed that “there is no state alone in Gaza and no state without Gaza.”

He pledged to alleviate "the suffering of our people, especially in the Gaza Strip, providing all forms of support and relief to our people there, and preparing from this moment for economic recovery and reconstruction operations.”

President Abbas on Thursday appointed Mustafa as the new prime minister and asked him to form a new government.

Mustafa will replace Mohammad Shtayyeh, who resigned in February in the light of developments related to the Israeli war on Gaza.

According to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa, Mustafa is currently the chairman of the Palestine Investment Fund (PIF), a senior economic advisor to Abbas and a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization's Executive Committee.

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive against Gaza since an Oct. 7 cross-border attack led by the Palestinian group, Hamas, in which less than 1,200 people were killed.

At least 31,490 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have since been killed in Gaza, and 73,439 injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

Israel has also imposed a crippling blockade on the Palestinian enclave, leaving its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, on the verge of starvation.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid a crippling blockade of most food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

Renowned artist confronts destruction of African wildlife in latest art show

Sat, 10 Jun 2023 11:46:43 +0300

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Often depicted as an integral feature of the continent, African wildlife, from iconic big beasts to its vast array of species, continues to attract millions of foreign travelers every year.

But a new art exhibition in the heart of Johannesburg is questioning the relationship between humans and animals on the continent, which spans centuries and is often marked by the destruction and exploitation of African wildlife for commercial gain and recreational purposes.

From the killing of elephants in the 18th century to feed the ivory trade to decimating the rhino population through hunting, artist and photographer Roger Ballen argues — through provocative installations and multimedia works — that humans have been at the forefront of destroying African wildlife for around 200 years.

The exhibition, which opened in March this year, is titled ‘End of The Game.’ It explores how depictions of African wildlife, including in Hollywood films, were used to instill stereotypes about the continent that led to the ruin of its environment.

“Most people in the West had never been to Africa, so all they knew was what they saw in the movie posters and the films which portrayed Africa as a dark continent with savages and wild animals,” said Ballen.

Although hunting was practiced on the continent before the arrival of European colonists, the practice took on a different form, with the introduction of firearms, the commercial trade of materials like ivory and animal skins and the beginning of ‘trophy hunting’ of big game for sport.

The continent's wildlife continues to face threats today, as land is cleared for development or forests are cut down for fuel, squeezing natural habitats. Human-made climate change is also damaging the landscape, with parts of the continent suffering long periods of drought and other erratic weather including cyclones, heavy rainfall and dust storms.

Ballen used artefacts collected from metal scrap yards, hunting farms, pawn shops and roadsides on his local and international travels over a career of more than four decades to put together a collection of photographs, artworks and creative installations.

“It is about putting it together in an imaginative and creative way that still has an impact and challenges the viewer in all sorts of ways,” said Ballen.

The 73-year-old American-born photographer has lived and worked in Africa for more than 40 years and has developed a reputation for dark and abstract artworks, a consistency he appears to have kept with this most recent body of work.

One of the centerpieces of the exhibition is the documentary section which includes objects, texts, photographs and books documenting early years of hunting expeditions in Africa.

“That gives people sort of the objectification of the period that we are dealing with and when the destruction of game started in Africa," he said. “This is for the audience to discover and to come to terms with.”

Another display of early versions of weapons and ammunition used to kill bigger animals leads into the “Hunter’s Room” — a staged installation depicting archival photographs and items in a staged safari setting.

A hunter figure made from wax is the main character in the room, surrounded by his hunting memorabilia and collectibles.

Some of the photographs include archived pictures of former U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt’s much publicized hunting expeditions in Kenya and Winston Churchill’s east African safari, both in the early 1900s.

A short film shown inside a curated cinema compiles clips from old Western movies depicting African wildlife, including video shot by European tourists who came to the continent for trophy hunting. Hunters can be seen on films towering victoriously over their trophies, mostly dead giraffes, elephants and rhino.

Others depict Indigenous Africans having conquered elephants, lions and leopards.

Trophy hunting is still legal in many countries across the continent, although it's typically regulated to ensure population numbers of animals can be sustained.

The exhibition continues to draw crowds to the Inside Out Centre for the Arts in Johannesburg since it opened, and it will remain on display indefinitely, according to Ballen.

A typical Saturday morning at the gallery is a hive of activity.

“I don’t want to say it is scary, but it is very interesting," said visitor Shelley Drynan. “It is interesting to see how people feel about animals and how they interact with animals, how most people actually are hypocrites when it comes to their dealings with animals.”

Sarah Wilding, another visitor who said she was familiar with Ballen's earlier works, said her emotions were stirred by the exhibition's depiction of African wildlife and its destruction over many years.

“To just be here and feel the melancholy and the mystery," Wilding said, “is truly a fantastic experience.”

At Cannes, Polish filmmaker's 'In the Rearview' spotlights Ukrainians escaping war

AP — Mon, 22 May 2023 16:02:55 +0300

When Polish filmmaker Maciek Hamela first began evacuating Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s war on their country, he wasn't intending to make a film. He was one of the many Poles extending humanitarian aid to neighbors under attack, and had turned down an offer to film a television investigation there.

But the reflections of the people he was transporting to safety in his van were so poignant that soon he began filming them. He asked a friend who is a director of photography to help him film — and drive — and directed his camera squarely back at his passengers as they traversed their war-scarred land.

The result is “In the Rearview,” a documentary film being shown at the Cannes film festival in France as part of a parallel program devoted to independent cinema. It is not in competition.

A Polish-French co-production, it takes place almost entirely in Hamela's van, with the camera capturing the harrowed passengers, one group after another in countless journeys made between March and November of 2022.

The result is a composite portrait of men, women and children traversing a devastated landscape of bombed-out buildings and past checkpoints with dangerous detours caused by mines and collapsed bridges and roads.

The 84-minute film shows a little girl so traumatized that she stopped speaking. There is a Congolese woman who was so badly injured that she has undergone 18 operations since Hamela evacuated her. A mother with two kids who pass by the Dnieper River; believing it to be the sea, the kids ask their mother if she will take them there after the war.

“The way we set up the film was to see the reflection of the war in these very small details of ordinary life and the life that we all have,” Hamela told The Associated Press in an interview in Warsaw before he flew to Cannes.

There is also some humor, with one woman commenting ironically that she had always wanted to travel. A woman escaping with her cat saying it needed a bathroom break.

In order not to exploit the people he was helping, Hamela told them a camera was in a car before he picked them up. And they only signed forms giving him permission to use the footage after they had arrived safely at their destinations so they would never feel that was a condition for his help.

“In the Rearview” also documents one of the many Polish efforts to help Ukraine. When Russia launched its all-out invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, there was a massive grassroots effort to help across Poland, with regular people taking time off work to travel to the border with Ukraine to distribute food. Some picked up strangers and took them to shelters or even into their own homes.

Hamela began on day one to raise money for the Ukrainian army. By day three he had bought a van to transport Ukrainians from the Polish border and convinced his father to open his beloved summer home to strangers.

Soon Hamela heard from a friend of people in eastern Ukraine needing to be rescued, and he began driving to the front lines of the war to pick them up. Some emerged from basements where they had been sheltering in terror.

When the war began, Hamela had been working on a documentary about a crisis at Poland's border with Belarus. Large numbers of migrants from the Middle East and Africa had been trying to cross that border in 2021. Poland and other European Union countries viewed that as an effort organized by Russia's ally Belarus to destabilize Poland and other EU countries.

Poland reacted by building a wall to stop the migrants, resulting in some dying in the forests and bogs of the area.

The war in Ukraine led Hamela to drop that project, which was to have focused on the indifference in some Polish border communities to the plights of the migrants and refugees.

Having observed both crises up close, he sees a connection.

“This is my personal take on this, but I really think it was meant to antagonize Poles against all refugees in preparation for the war with Ukraine," he said.

Hamela, who is now 40, was also active in supporting Ukrainians involved in the pro-democracy Maidan Revolution of 2014, which led to Russia's initial incursions into Ukraine.

He says the world shown in his documentary could hardly be further from the glamorous world of Cannes, and he hopes it will remind people of how high the stakes are in Ukraine.

“We’re trying to use this coverage to remind everybody that the war is still going on and lives need saving. And Ukraine is not going to win it without our help,” he said. “So that’s the ultimate task with this film.”

British beauty queen says she was denied US entry over Syrian roots

Arab News — Mon, 31 Oct 2022 08:46:13 +0300

A British beauty queen originally from Syria believes she was banned from entering the US because of the country of her birth.

Leen Clive, a trainee doctor, was due to represent the UK at the final of the Mrs World competition in Las Vegas on Jan. 15.

Clive, 29, who was born in Damascus and arrived in England in 2013, said her family’s visa applications had all been approved but hers was rejected.

“I applied with a British passport. I am representing Britain and I’m a British citizen, so I had no idea I’d be banned from the US,” Clive told the BBC.

“My husband and my baby girl had their visas granted, but mine was refused — and the only difference is my place of birth.”

US officials said in a statement: “Visa records are confidential under US law; therefore, we cannot discuss the details of individual visa cases.”

The US government says on its website that people applying for visas who are citizens of countries that America considers sponsors of terrorism, such as Syria, must be interviewed by a consular officer.

Emma Hardy, Clive’s local MP, said she is trying to intervene on her behalf. Clive said she has asked the US Embassy in the UK to show “common sense.”

If her appeal proves unsuccessful, it will leave the UK without a competitor in the contest for married women.

“I’m still hopeful. I know I’m running out of time, but if someone from the embassy could look at my application then things could be different,” Clive said.

Netherlands: 'Suffering' exhibition by Adnan Alloush spots on Syria's pain

Sat, 15 Oct 2022 10:49:00 +0300

From the beginning of this month to the end of next December, "Gallery Franks" for Arts in the city of Zoetermeer in the western Netherlands will host a plastic exhibition by the Syrian artist "Adnan Alloush".

The exhibition, entitled "Suffering", includes more than 50 works executed in acrylic colors in several medium and large sizes, which he completed inside the refugee camp in which he lives.

Alloush's paintings, 56, with their expressive ability and dramatic effect, are characterized by diversity and richness from one stage to another. -.

His passion for art began when he was still ten years old, as he used to draw small drawings in addition to his homework, and within years he was able to be a professional artist skilled in his artistic tools as he excelled in the fields of drawing and calligraphy alike.

Huge mural

In 1995, Alloush moved to the United Arab Emirates and was chosen to teach in one of the best model schools in the country. He also established the "Lamast Company" for interior design and decoration, and through it he implemented many projects in the palaces of the ruling family.

He was also the calligrapher of the Presidential Court, and he executed a huge mural on the occasion of the UAE Federation’s Day with a length of 160 meters, in which he excelled in linking the art of Arabic calligraphy and the arts of decoration and painting. The painting won the award for the best artwork on this occasion. The incorporation of different materials, in addition to painting and decoration, and the addition of 30

m2 of pure gold leaf.

Studio in a refugee camp

Alloush, 55, participated in several international exhibitions held in the capital, "Abu Dhabi", and his works won the admiration and appreciation of the public, the media and those interested. He won many awards from the Ministry of Education there as a reward for his outstanding performance in teaching the arts of drawing, sculpture and calligraphy.

In 2021, Alloush took refuge in the Netherlands via death boats on a perilous journey to live in a camp, where he managed to secure a small studio inside the camp to work on.

He used to draw pencil sketches, such as scenes of suffering and hardships faced by Syrians - as he witnessed some of them himself - and says: "What I see in the world, I record it in my head and draw."

Human and mental value

Alloush added that some Dutch artists visited the camp and saw his works and admired his style and the human and intellectual value of the works. They advised him to set up an exhibition for them, and an exhibition has already been organized in Franks as of August 26.

The exhibition, which lasts for two months, included paintings he completed during the past ten months of various sizes, some in black and white, and in some of them more colors were used, mostly using acrylic on canvas technique.

Regarding his intentional choice of black and white, Alloush said that the colors need space and cost more money, which is not available at the present time, so he focused on black and white in his work that he accomplished over the past period.

Faris Al-Rifai

Tehran unveils Western art masterpieces hidden for decades

Thu, 11 Aug 2022 12:40:27 +0300

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Some of the world’s most prized works of contemporary Western art have been unveiled for the first time in decades — in Tehran.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, a hard-line cleric, rails against the influence of the West. Authorities have lashed out at “deviant” artists for “attacking Iran’s revolutionary culture." And the Islamic Republic has plunged further into confrontation with the United States and Europe as it rapidly accelerates its nuclear program and diplomatic efforts stall.

But contradictions abound in the Iranian capital, where thousands of well-heeled men and hijab-clad women marveled at 19th- and 20th-century American and European minimalist and conceptual masterpieces on display this summer for the first time at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art.

On a recent August afternoon, art critics and students were delighted at Marcel Duchamp's see-through 1915 mural, “The Large Glass,” long interpreted as an exploration of erotic frustration.

They gazed at a rare 4-meter (13-foot) untitled sculpture by American minimalist pioneer Donald Judd and one of Sol Lewitt's best-known serial pieces, “Open Cube," among other important works. The Judd sculpture, consisting of a horizontal array of lacquered brass and aluminum panels, is likely worth millions of dollars.

“Setting up a show with such a theme and such works is a bold move that takes a lot of courage,” said Babak Bahari, 62, who was viewing the exhibit of 130 works for the fourth time since it opened in late June. “Even in the West these works are at the heart of discussions and dialogue.”

The government of Iran’s Western-backed shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and his wife, the former Empress Farah Pahlavi, built the museum and acquired the multibillion-dollar collection in the late 1970s, when oil boomed and Western economies stagnated. Upon opening, it showed sensational works by Pablo Picasso, Mark Rothko, Claude Monet, Jackson Pollock and other heavyweights, enhancing Iran’s cultural standing on the world stage.

But just two years later, in 1979, Shiite clerics ousted the shah and packed away the art in the museum’s vault. Some paintings — cubist, surrealist, impressionist, even pop art — sat untouched for decades to avoid offending Islamic values and catering to Western sensibilities.

But during a thaw in Iran's hard-line politics, the art started to resurface. While Andy Warhol's paintings of the Pahlavis and some choice nudes are still hidden in the basement, much of the museum's collection has been brought out to great fanfare as Iran's cultural restrictions have eased.

The ongoing exhibit on minimalism, featuring 34 Western artists, has captured particular attention. Over 17,000 people have made the trip since it opened, the museum said — nearly double the footfall of past shows.

Curator Behrang Samadzadegan credits a recent renewed interest in conceptual art, which first shocked audiences in the 1960s by drawing on political themes and taking art out of traditional galleries and into the wider world.

The museum's spokesperson, Hasan Noferesti, said the size of the crowds coming to the exhibition, which lasts until mid-September, shows the thrill of experiencing long-hidden modern masterpieces.

It also attests to the enduring appetite for art among Iran’s young generation. Over 50% of the country's roughly 85 million people are under 30 years old.

Despite their country's deepening global isolation, and fears that their already limited social and cultural freedoms may be further curtailed under the hard-line government elected a year ago, young Iranians are increasingly exploring the international art world on social media. New galleries are buzzing. Art and architecture schools are thriving.

“These are good works of art, you don’t want to imitate them," said Mohammad Shahsavari, a 20-year-old architecture student standing before Lewitt's cube structure. “Rather, you get inspiration from them."

IS ex-bastion in Syria hosts Jackie Chan film shoot

Sun, 17 Jul 2022 20:35:00 +0300

Hajar al Aswad (Syria) (AFP) – A ghost town since a 2018 operation to flush out jihadists, Hajar al-Aswad near the Syrian capital has come back to life as the location of a Jackie Chan-produced action movie.

"Home Operation" is inspired by China's 2015 evacuation of Chinese and other foreign citizens from the war in Yemen, an operation that was seen as a landmark for Beijing.

Yemen was deemed too dangerous a venue to shoot and some scenes of the film, which is also backed by an Emirati production company, are being shot in Syria, although the script only mentions a fictional country called "Poman".

The ruins of Hajar al-Aswad on Thursday filled with a motley crew of actors in Yemeni tribal attire, Syrian extras in uniform and polo-wearing Chinese film crew members.

Jackie Chan is the main producer, although there are no plans for him to visit Syria.

The film pitches itself as a blockbuster that will glorify the role of the Chinese authorities in a heroic evacuation.

Speaking to reporters as his crew installed their equipment and tanks in hastily altered livery moved into position, director Yinxi Song confirmed the film's propaganda credentials.

"It takes the perspective of diplomats who are Communist Party members, who braved a hail of bullets in a war-torn country and safely brought all Chinese compatriots onto the country's warship unscathed," he said.

Actors in the film "Home Operation", a Chinese-Emirati joint venture produced by Jackie Chan LOUAI BESHARA AFP

The ambassador of China, one of few countries to have maintained good diplomatic relations with the regime of Syria President Bashar al-Assad, was present to launch the Syria shoot, which is expected to last several days.

A red banner in three languages was unfurled for the small ceremony and another that read "Peace & Love" was propped up on the front of a tank.

'Low-cost studio'

Hajar al-Aswad, which means "black rock" in Arabic, was once a densely populated Damascus suburb that lies next to the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmuk.

Actors are pictured in the Hajar al-Aswad neighbourhood of the Syrian capital Damascus LOUAI BESHARA AFP

Both areas became major hotspots in the Syrian civil conflict that erupted in 2011 and were at least partially controlled at one point by the Islamic State group.

The reconquest of both neighbourhoods by Syrian pro-government forces in May 2018 marked the moment the regime brought the entire capital Damascus back under its control.

Swathes of Hajar al-Aswad were completely levelled, however, turning the neighbourhood into a sinister sprawl of grey, gutted buildings.

A few residents have returned to the least damaged parts of Hajar al-Aswad, leaving the rest completely uninhabited.

Chinese actors during the filming of a scene in "Home Operation" LOUAI BESHARA AFP

"The war-ravaged areas in Syria have turned into a movie studio. These areas attract film producers," said director Rawad Shahin, who is part of Home Operation's Syria crew.

"Building studios similar to these areas is very expensive, so these areas are considered as low-cost studios," he said.

The production team says it plans to use several other locations to film in Syria, where productions from Iran and Russia, both allies of Assad, have also been shot.

Syria is targeted by a raft of international sanctions and is also littered with unexploded ordnance which last year made it the world's most lethal country for landmine kills.

Chinese navy vessels carrying out anti-piracy patrols were diverted to Yemen in 2015 to evacuate what officials at the time said were hundreds of people from 10 different countries stranded by the escalating conflict.

The successful operation was touted by Beijing at the time as a proud moment for its navy, evidence of its humanitarian principles and of its growing global reach.

Depp and Heard face uncertain career prospects after trial

Thu, 02 Jun 2022 09:55:05 +0300

FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) — A jury's finding that both Johnny Depp and his ex-wife, Amber Heard, were defamed in a long-running public dispute capped a lurid six-week trial that also raised questions about whether the two actors can overcome tarnished reputations.

The verdict handed down Wednesday in Virginia found that Depp had been defamed by three statements in an op-ed written by Heard in which she said she was an abuse victim. The jury awarded him more than $10 million. But jurors also concluded that Heard was defamed by a lawyer for Depp who accused her of creating a detailed hoax surrounding the abuse allegations. She was awarded $2 million.

Depp had hoped the libel lawsuit would help restore his reputation. However, legal and entertainment experts said that both actors' reputations have been damaged by ugly details about their brief marriage that came out during the televised trial watched by millions.

“Both of them will work again, but I think it will be a while before a major studio will consider them ‘safe’ enough to bet on,” said former entertainment lawyer Matthew Belloni, who writes about the business of Hollywood for the newsletter Puck. “The personal baggage that was revealed in this trial was just too icky for a studio to want to deal with.”

The case captivated viewers who watched gavel-to-gavel television coverage, including impassioned followers on social media who dissected the actors’ mannerisms, their wardrobe choices and their use of alcohol and drugs.

Both performers emerge with unclear prospects for their careers. Depp, a three-time best actor Oscar nominee, was a bankable star until recent years, with credits including playing Capt. Jack Sparrow in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” films. However, he lost that role and was replaced in a “Fantastic Beasts” spinoff.

Heard’s acting career has been more modest, and her only two upcoming roles are in a small film and the upcoming “Aquaman” sequel due out next year.

Eric Rose, a crisis management and communications expert in Los Angeles, called the trial a “classic murder-suicide,” in terms of damage to both careers.

“From a reputation-management perspective, there can be no winners,” he said. “They’ve bloodied each other up. It becomes more difficult now for studios to hire either actor because you’re potentially alienating a large segment of your audience who may not like the fact that you have retained either Johnny or Amber for a specific project because feelings are so strong now.”

Heard, who attended court Wednesday and was stoic while the verdict was read, said she was heartbroken by what she described as a setback for women in general.

"I’m even more disappointed with what this verdict means for other women. It’s a setback. It sets back the clock to a time when a woman who spoke up and spoke out could be publicly humiliated. It sets back the idea that violence against women is to be taken seriously,’’ she said in a statement posted on her Twitter account.

Depp, who was not in court Wednesday, said “the jury gave me my life back. I am truly humbled.”

“I hope that my quest to have the truth be told will have helped others, men or women, who have found themselves in my situation, and that those supporting them never give up,” he said in a statement posted to Instagram.

Depp sued Heard for libel in Fairfax County Circuit Court over a December 2018 op-ed she wrote in The Washington Post describing herself as “a public figure representing domestic abuse.” The essay never mentioned his name.

The jury found in Depp's favor on all three of his claims relating to specific statements in the piece.

In evaluating Heard's counterclaims, jurors considered three statements by a lawyer for Depp who called her allegations a hoax. They found she was defamed by one of them, in which the lawyer claimed that she and friends “spilled a little wine and roughed the place up, got their stories straight,” and called police.

While the case was ostensibly about libel, most of the testimony focused on whether Heard had been physically and sexually abused, as she claimed. Heard enumerated more than a dozen alleged assaults, including a fight in Australia — where Depp was shooting a “Pirates of the Caribbean” sequel — in which Depp lost the tip of his middle finger and Heard said she was sexually assaulted with a liquor bottle.

Depp said he never hit Heard and that she was the abuser, though Heard’s attorneys highlighted years-old text messages Depp sent apologizing to Heard for his behavior as well as profane texts he sent to a friend in which Depp said he wanted to kill Heard and defile her dead body.

Brett Ward, a family law attorney in New York, said Depp made himself a more believable witness by admitting to drug and alcohol use and that he could be a difficult person. But he said Depp also ran the risk of making those moments more memorable to the public than his film work.

“He says he did this for his children. Having watched the whole trial, I don’t think that he did any service to his children by airing all of this dirty laundry,” Ward said in an interview.

"But whether this was worthwhile for Johnny Depp, we will know in five years if he reestablishes himself as an A-list Hollywood actor. And if he doesn’t? I think he’s made a terrible mistake because most people aren’t going to remember his rather distinguished Hollywood career. They’re going to remember this trial.”

Damascus art installation turns ceramic doves into war symbol

AFP — Sun, 17 Apr 2022 10:12:00 +0300

DAMASCUS — Hundreds of ceramic doves are suspended over the streets of the Old City of Damascus, part of an art installation that had been set to debut before the start of Syria's war.

The lifelike figurines crafted by Buthaina Al Ali, a professor at Damascus University's faculty of arts, had been gathering dust in a basement since the outbreak of Syria's conflict in 2011.

Eleven years on, the 15,000 ceramic birds are finally airbound, appearing in an exhibition curated by Ali's students on the woes of Syria's war.

"I had dreamt of decorating the centre of my city and hanging the doves in a crowded place for people to see," Ali, 48, told AFP.

"But the war changed everything, and I had to postpone my dream all this time."

The exhibition in the Old City of Damascus, curated by 16 students from the faculty of arts, is titled: "Once upon a time, a window."

The art on display deals with the displacement, hunger and helplessness wrought by the country's bloody civil war.

"I finally suggested to my students that they take the doves and hang them in a way they see fit," said Ali, who lost two family members to the conflict.

Storybook scene

The students raised the doves in the courtyard of a traditional Damascene home.

The Kozah art gallery in the Old City and adjacent streets were also adorned with the ceramic figurines, some of which are fitted with small LED lights.

The doves are the centrepiece of the exhibition, which features other artworks by students.

"Sadness is the common factor between all the pieces," Ali said.

But for gallery owner Samer Kozah, the exhibition has turned the Old City into a scene from a story book.

"It's a story displayed out in the open, allowing those who experience it to move from one tale to another," he told AFP.

The doves have been incorporated into student artworks, including an installation by 24-year-old Hammoud Radwan.

His piece, titled "A Continued Disappearance", sees the doves placed beside portraits of the artist's friends who have left Syria in search of a brighter future abroad.

"The faces aren't in Syria anymore," Radwan told AFP, pointing to the pictures.

"The pigeons fly beside them to express dispersal," he added.

Since 2011, the war in Syria has killed almost half a million people and forced nearly half the country's pre-war population from their homes, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

'Pain and exasperation'

In a narrow alley in the Old City, empty plates tied to ceramic pigeons clatter against one another above an empty wooden table.

The installation by student artist Pierre Hamati, titled "Syrian Supper", represents the hunger plaguing Syria's population, nearly 60 per cent of whom are food insecure.

"The [empty] table represents our table, and the plates resemble our empty plates," the 25-year-old told AFP.

"The pigeons represent us... our dreams, ambitions and rights which are no longer sacred."

In another installation, 300 pigeons appear suspended in mid-flight on their way out of an abandoned house.

"They are similar to the homes of some Syrians" who had to flee the ravages of war, said Zeina Taatouh, who created the work.

Students Raneem Al Lahham and Hassan Al Maghout locked the birds inside cages in their installation.

Gulnar Sarikhi, another art student, hung the doves upside down, with a knot tied at their feet.

Sarikhi chose the title "Impotence" for her piece, which represents the helplessness of Syria's people.

"I could not imagine the doves flying," she said.

"I saw them hanging by their legs, embodying the pain and exasperation which we can do nothing about."

Why a monthly period is especially hard for millions of women and girls around the world

Mon, 04 Apr 2022 11:46:46 +0300

(THE CONVERSATION) Millions of girls and women are displaced and on the move right now globally.

An especially important but often overlooked issue is one of the most basic parts of life for women – menstruation. This routine part of female life is a pronounced burden for women in low-income countries and those who are displaced. It disrupts many girls’ abilities to participate actively in school, potentially consigning them to second-class status for the rest of their lives. A lack of easy access to adequate toilets in schools or elsewhere can also place them at higher risk for sexual violence as they seek out safe places to manage their menstruation and other sanitation needs.

As someone who is studying ways to help girls and women manage their periods with dignity, I see Menstrual Hygiene Day on May 28 as a critical opportunity to talk about and bring attention to this too often taboo topic.

Lack of privacy and access to facilities

The International Rescue Committee has partnered with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, with support from Research for Health in Humanitarian Crises, to improve standards in menstrual hygiene management programming in emergencies across the world.

Its aim is to raise the bar and provide guidelines for a comprehensive response – one that considers more than just sanitary pads.

To do so, the project needed to ask adolescent girls and women what they actually need and want, and effectively integrate a variety of perspectives and experiences.

What we found was that the main difficulties women and girls faced went beyond a need for materials and included a lack of privacy and facilities to manage their menstruation. Living in tents without doors, with only curtains, they had no choice but to use the shared toilets, which were cramped, unclean, poorly lit and had no running water.

This ranged from girls and women living in informal settlements in urban settings in the Middle East and Europe, to those in camps for refugees and internally displaced populations in Asia and Africa.

Secrecy and taboos also complicate

For women and girls displaced by conflict or natural disaster, managing their monthly periods can be challenging. Few female hygiene products are available, private sanitation facilities are hard to find and clean water is not always guaranteed. Often, even just talking about periods can be challenging, given the secrecy and taboos that surround menstruation in many societies.

Without the ability to properly manage their periods, women and girls are increasingly vulnerable in their day-to-day lives. It makes them more susceptible to gender-based and sexual violence as they seek appropriate materials and private places to wash, dry and dispose of used materials. For example, many may need to seek out private spaces in forests or under cover or darkness to try to manage their washing and drying privately, but being alone puts them at risk of attack.

Other girls and women may encounter harassment when they go to pick up monthly distributions of pads. They risk embarrassment and ridicule from a menstrual leak, which can hinder their ability to engage socially, attend school or carry out daily activities. This can prove more challenging with limited laundry soap, water and few changes of clothes.

“If you take too long at the toilet someone will come in while you are changing and no one is supposed to see you during menstruation,” one girl shared.

“You must dry your underwear and pads in secret. People may steal it for witchcraft. This can cause you infertility,” said another.

We also found that disposal of waste materials was a common concern. There were no or few waste bins in the toilets in displacement camps, so women and girls needed to find their own ways of disposing of used pads. They were not willing to throw them away in the provided waste facilities in fear that people would see their pads and get hold of them. Strong cultural beliefs contributed to existing fears that if someone were to see their used menstrual material, they might be cursed.

In Myanmar, for example, women resorted to burying them in the ground at some distance from their homes, in the hours of darkness. Others tried to dispose of pads directly into toilets, leading to frequent blockages.

Information lacking, and sometimes badly sourced

Access to information was also scarce. Girls learned about menstruation from mothers, sisters or friends. As is often the case, this advice wove together folklore with more practical information.

For instance, we found that Syrian refugee girls in Lebanon believed that they were prohibited from washing themselves, cutting their hair or participating in physical activities while they were menstruating.

We found that women and adolescent girls strongly desired increased education around menstruation. Mothers especially wanted information on how best to discuss it with their daughters.

Instead, girls often learn about their periods from male teachers.

“When the teacher is telling them about menstruation, he is male, and there are boys there. The boys start to laugh and shout at them and afterward continue to tease us,” explained a Congolese girl in Nyarugusu Camp.

The humanitarian community has become better at distributing materials to women and girls, and in incorporating menstrual hygiene management into their responses.

Working for solutions

Making sure women and girls have access to suitable materials (and underwear!) and know how to use them is important; but there’s more to solving this problem.

Toilets and washrooms need to be private, safe and clean. Waste disposal systems need to address all waste flows generated in the camps effectively and discreetly. Schools need to be able to cater to girls when they have their period. Better information is necessary to break societal taboos around menstruation. We’ve heard all of this from women and girls themselves.

The next step of our menstruation investigation project aims to finalize a comprehensive package of tools and guidelines to help agencies rapidly identify key needs; provide needed materials, facilities and support; and monitor the effectiveness of the program so that gaps can be identified and filled.

This is possible only if the humanitarian aid community works across sectors, including education, protection, health, water and sanitation, to provide the best possible programs in emergencies.

And it is possible only if aid workers talk with women and girls, listen to their concerns and provide appropriate programming, not just providing programs by the book.

Ultimately, a humanitarian response that allows women and girls to manage their menstruation in dignity is a better humanitarian response.

11-year-old Syrian violinist admitted to Vienna University of Music

Mon, 28 Mar 2022 00:15:00 +0300

The Syrian musician girl, Brolin Thani, learned music before she learned to walk and speak, and the environment in which she lived contributed to the development of her musical talent for playing.

The sound of the violin played by her two older brothers attracted her more attention than the usual children's games for those of her age, and when she was eleven years old, she won the "Golden Note" award in Austria, and she was able to enter the prestigious Vienna University of Music and Arts.

Brolin, whose name in Aramaic means "the Jewel", moved with her family from the Syriac town of "Rish Ainu" in the "Ras al-Ain" area in northeastern Syria to Austria, her father registered her with his other children in scientific schools and in an orchestra institute.

Her father, George Thani told Zaman al-Wasl that his little girl proved her remarkable merit in playing the violin, which prompted the institute's administration to choose her among 500 students to study at a higher level due to her talent and distinction, and she was not more than 6 years old at the time.

At the age of nine, Brolin led an orchestra of 60 musicians of different nationalities, during which she played the children's song "Tik Tik, O Umm Suleiman" by the icon Fairuz, while her sister led the band in the song "Anta Omri" by Umm Kulthum.

After that, Brolin competed in several art competitions for different age groups and achieved first places with her sister, Semedra, noting that her 17-year-old sister taught Arabic music students and her brother is an oud player who played many concerts and held many concerts.

Youngest examinee before the committee

After Brolin reached the age of eleven, she participated in the "Golden Note" competition in Austria and achieved first place in it. In the honoring ceremony, she was chosen to play in the most prestigious and important place for music in Austria.

After Brolin was eleven years old, she participated in the "Golden Note" competition in Austria and won first place.

In the last honoring ceremony, she was chosen to play in the oldest and most important place for music in Austria. Usually, any famous musician needs a year or two to reserve a role to play in it. And theatrical arts, which is the largest musical university in the world and has 3,500 students.

It came as a surprise to the family, and a date was set for a playing exam in front of 12 professors from several countries at the same university.

Brolin, who was the youngest examinee before the committee, performed a piece of "Vivaldi", and she was stopped playing after 3 minutes and before she finished playing, and the second presto was stopped after less than two minutes and the third after a minute and a half, and we learned from the professor who chose to record that the committee had enough time. Specified for playing if the player proves his competence and a high level of playing.

The approval then came via e-mail to enroll in MDF university, which is still eleven years old, to be the youngest student at the prestigious university in the world and has been studying for three years.

From "Mozart" house to king's palace

Brolin and her two brothers "Masaad and Semendra" formed the "Palmira" band to introduce Syrian art through music, where they gave a special concert at the house of the world musician Mozart in "Salzburg".

According to the testimony of the journalist presenter of the ceremony, the walls of Mozart’s house heard for the first time Arabic music more than 230 years after his death, where classical pieces were played and some songs of Fairuz and Umm Kulthum, as well as passages of Syrian Syriac folklore were played at the King’s Palace.

Brolin was invited to play in a concerto concert in the "Mosaic Fraine" hall in Vienna, which is one of the most important halls of world music houses, during which she won many awards and certificates, the most important of which was an invitation to learn and train by the most famous musicians of the world in Germany and the Czech Republic.

Psychologists and sociologists believe that musical preparations are inherited, and there are many musical talents among prominent authors in history, such as (Mozart), for example, discovered before the age of six and sometimes before the age of two or three years.

Recent psychological and social research indicates the importance of the age stage from 6-7 years in the development of children's musical sense and that the first years of childhood from the ground on which the child becomes familiar with music and begins his first experiences of perception and simulation of the songs he hears and moves his whole body in a unique rhythmic way During which he feels pleasure and by the age of six he has acquired an active relationship with musical symbols and then plays, performs and perceives with increasing degrees of accuracy.

Pompeii: Rebirth of Italy's dead city that nearly died again

Sun, 20 Feb 2022 11:53:00 +0300

POMPEII, Italy (AP) — In a few horrible hours, Pompeii was turned from a vibrant city into an ash-embalmed wasteland, smothered by a furious volcanic eruption in A.D. 79.

Then in this century, the excavated Roman city appeared alarmingly close to a second death, assailed by decades of neglect, mismanagement and scant systematic maintenance of the heavily visited ruins. The 2010 collapse of a hall where gladiators trained nearly cost Pompeii its coveted UNESCO World Heritage Site designation.

But these days, Pompeii is experiencing the makings of a rebirth.

Excavations undertaken as part of engineering stabilization strategies to prevent new collapses are yielding a raft of revelations about the everyday lives of Pompeii’s residents, as the lens of social class analysis is increasingly applied to new discoveries.

Under the archaeological park's new German-born director, innovative technology is helping restore some of Pompeii's nearly obliterated glories and limit the effects of a new threat — climate change.

Gabriel Zuchtriegel, an archaeologist appointed director general 10 months ago, likens Pompeii's rapid deterioration, starting in the 1970s, to “an airplane going down to the ground and really risking breaking” apart.

The Great Pompeii Project, an infusion of about 105 million euros ($120 million) in European Union funds — on condition it be spent promptly and effectively by 2016 — helped spare the ruins from further degradation.

“It was all spent and spent well,” Zuchtriegel said in an interview on a terrace with Pompeii's open-air Great Theater as a backdrop.

But with future conservation problems inevitable for building remains first excavated 250 years ago, new technology is crucial "in this kind of battle against time," the 41-year-old told The Associated Press.

Climate extremes, including increasingly intensive rainfall and spells of baking heat, could threaten Pompeii.

“Some conditions are changing and we can already measure this,” said Zuchtriegel.

Relying on human eyes to discern signs of climate-caused deterioration on mosaic floors and frescoed walls in about 10,000 excavated rooms of villas, workshops and humble homes would be impossible. So, artificial intelligence and drones will provide data and images in real time.

Experts will be alerted to "take a closer look and eventually intervene before things happen, before we get back to this situation where buildings are collapsing,” Zuchtriegel said.

Since last year, AI and robots are tackling what otherwise would be impossible tasks — reassembling frescoes that have crumbled into the tiniest of fragments. Among the goals is reconstructing the frescoed ceiling of the House of the Painters at Work, shattered by Allied bombing during World War II.

Robots will also help repair fresco damage in the Schola Armaturarum — the gladiators' barracks — once symbolizing Pompeii's modern-day deterioration and now celebrated as evidence of its revival. The weight of tons of unexcavated sections of the city pressing against excavated ruins, combined with rainfall accumulation and poor drainage, prompted the structure's collapse.

Seventeen of Pompeii's 66 hectares (42 of 163 acres) remain unexcavated, buried deep under lava stone. A long-running debate revolves on whether they should stay there.

At the start of the 19th century, the approach was “let's ... excavate all of Pompeii,” Zuchtriegel said.

But in the decades before the Great Pompeii Project, “there was something like a moratorium — because we have so many problems we won't excavate any more,” Zuchtriegel said. “And it was almost like, psychologically speaking, a depression.”

His Italian predecessor, Massimo Osanna, took a different approach: targeted digs during stabilization measures aimed at preventing further collapses.

“But it was a different kind of excavation. It was part of a larger approach where we have the combination of protection, research and accessibility,” Zuchtriegel said.

After the gladiator hall's collapse, engineers and landscapers created gradual slopes out of the land fronting excavated ruins with netting keeping the newly-shaped “hillsides” from crumbling.

Near the end of Via del Vesuvio, one of Pompeii's stone-paved streets, work in 2018 revealed an upscale domus, or home, with a bedroom wall decorated with a small, sensual fresco depicting the Roman god Jupiter disguised as a swan and impregnating Leda, the mythical queen of Sparta and mother of Helen of Troy.

But if visitors stand on tiptoe to look past the marvelous fresco over the home's jagged walls, they'll see how the back rooms remain embedded under the newly “stabilized” unexcavated edge of Pompeii.

Nearby is the most crowd-pleasing discovery to emerge from the shoring-up project — a corner “thermopolium" with a countertop setup similar to the familiar salad-and-soup bar arrangements of our times.

This fast-food locale is the only one discovered with frescoes in vivid hues of mustard-yellow and the omnipresent Pompeii red decorating the counter's base — apparently advertising the chef's specialties and including a bawdy graffito. Judging by the organic remains found in containers, the menu featured concoctions with ingredients like fish, snails and goat meat.

Quick street meals were likely a mainstay of the vast majority of Pompeiians not affluent enough to have kitchens.

Archaeologists have been increasingly using social-class and gender analyses to help interpret the past.

When they explored an ancient villa on Pompeii's outskirts, a 16-square-meter (172-square-foot) room emerged. It had doubled as the villa's storeroom and the sleeping quarters for a family of enslaved people. Crammed into the room were three beds, fashioned from cord and wood. Judging by the dimensions, a shorter bed was that of a child.

When the discovery was announced last year, Zuchtriegel described it as a “window on the precarious reality of people who rarely appeared in historical sources” about Pompeii.

This winter, an afternoon guided tour is offered at sites not otherwise open to the public. One such offering is the House of the Little Pig. On a wall of a tiny kitchen is a whimsical painted design of a pig's head with a prominent snout.

The park's ambitions stretch further: Nearby Naples and its sprawling suburbs ringing Vesuvius suffer from organized crime and high youth unemployment, which drives many young people to emigrate.

So the archaeological park is bringing together students from the area's more elite institutions and from working class neighborhoods who attend trade schools to perform a classical Greek play at the Great Theater.

“We ... can try to contribute to a change,” Zuchtriegel said.

There are also plans to create public strolling grounds in an unexcavated section of ancient Pompeii which, until recently, had been used as an illegal dump and even a marijuana farm.

Elizabeth the Steadfast: Queen marks 70 years on throne

Fri, 04 Feb 2022 13:05:02 +0300

LONDON (AP) — Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor wasn’t born to wear the crown. But destiny intervened.

The woman who became Queen Elizabeth II will mark 70 years on the throne Sunday, an unprecedented reign that has made her a symbol of stability as the United Kingdom navigated an age of uncertainty.

From her early days as a glamorous young royal in glittering tiaras to her more recent incarnation as the nation’s grandmother, the queen has witnessed the end of the British Empire, the advent of multiculturalism, the rise of international terrorism, and the challenges posed by Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic. In a world of relentless change, she has been a constant — representing the U.K.’s interests abroad, applauding the nation’s successes and commiserating in its failures, and always remaining above the fray of politics.

That constancy should earn Elizabeth a royal epithet like those of her predecessors such as William the Conqueror, Edward the Confessor and Alfred the Great, said royal historian Hugo Vickers.

“I’ve always thought she should be called Elizabeth the Steadfast," Vickers told The Associated Press. "I think it’s a perfect way of describing her. She wasn’t necessarily expecting to be queen, and she embraced that duty.’’

As the elder daughter of King George V’s second son, Elizabeth, now 95, was expected to live the life of a minor royal when she was born on April 21, 1926. Dogs and horses, a country house, a suitable match — a comfortable but uneventful life — seemed her future.

But everything changed a decade later when her uncle, King Edward VIII, abdicated so he could marry the American divorcee Wallis Simpson. Elizabeth’s father became King George VI, making the young princess heir apparent.

George VI, whose struggles to overcome a stutter were portrayed in the 2010 film “The King’s Speech,” endeared himself to the nation when he refused to leave London as bombs fell during the early months of World War II.

Elizabeth followed her father in leading by example, joining the Auxiliary Territorial Service in early 1945, becoming the first female member of the Royal Family to join the armed services as a full-time active member. On her 21st birthday, she dedicated her life to the nation and the Commonwealth, the voluntary association of states that grew out of the British Empire.

“I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong,” she said in a radio address broadcast around the world.

In 1952, the young princess embarked on a tour of the Commonwealth in place of her ailing father. She was at a remote Kenyan lodge, where she and her husband Prince Philip watched baboons from the treetops, when she heard her father had died.

She immediately returned to London, disembarking the plane in black mourning clothes, to begin her life as queen. She has reigned ever since, with crown and scepter on big occasions, but more commonly wearing a broad-brimmed hat and carrying a simple handbag.

In the intervening seven decades, the queen has shared confidences with 14 prime ministers and met 13 U.S. presidents.

Once a year, she travels the mile or so from Buckingham Palace to the House of Lords for the ceremonial opening of Parliament. And when world leaders come to call she hosts state banquets during which her diamonds flash under the TV lights and presidents and prime ministers worry about whether to bow and when to offer a toast.

But it is the less lavish events that give the queen a link to the public.

At the garden parties that honor the service of everyone from soldiers and charity workers to long-serving school librarians and crossing guards, guests wear festive hats and drink tea as they try to catch a glimpse of the queen on the lawn outside Buckingham Palace. The honorees can spot her at a distance, as it is said she favors bright colors so the public can spot her in a crowd.

Then there is the annual wreath laying at the memorial to those who have died during conflicts around the world, as well as the numerous school openings, hospice visits and tours of maternity wards that have filled her days.

Britain’s longest-serving monarch, the only sovereign most Britons have ever known, has been a constant presence from the Suez Crisis of 1956, when Egypt’s seizure of the Suez Canal underscored Britain’s declining might, through the labor strife of the 1980s and the 2005 terror attacks in London..

When Prince Philip died during the pandemic, she donned a black face mask and sat alone during his socially distanced funeral, silently demonstrating that the rules applied to everyone — particularly her.

“She’s not beholden to the electorate. She’s not dependent on her latest hit or her latest movie,'' said Emily Nash, royal editor of HELLO! magazine. “She’s just there. She does what she does. She carries out her duties without ever complaining or making any personal drama. And people respect her for that.”

Not that there haven’t been controversies.

In the early 1990s, criticism of the monarchy increased amid reports of the queen’s private wealth and concerns about the expense of the monarchy. In 1992, the queen agreed to pay the expenses of most of her family and become the first monarch to pay income taxes since the 1930s.

Tensions flared again in 1997 when the royal family’s silence after the death of Princess Diana, the ex-wife of Prince Charles, fueled the resentment of Diana’s many fans.

Even now, the monarchy is struggling to distance itself from the scandal caused by a sex abuse lawsuit filed against Prince Andrew, the queen’s second son, and the fallout after two of the royal family's most popular members, Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, ditched their royal duties and departed for California.

But the queen has transcended scandal and remained popular throughout it all, said Kelly Beaver, the CEO of polling firm Ipsos UK, which has tracked her popularity for decades.

“Part of this because she is so synonymous with ... the monarchy, which is something the British people are proud of,'' Beaver said.

Still, Tiwa Adebayo, a social media commentator and writer who inherited a fascination with the monarchy from her grandmother, believes younger people want “more transparency” — to see the royal family move beyond the adage of “never complain, never explain’’ that has typified the queen’s reign.

For the queen, Sunday is likely to be bittersweet, marking both her long reign and the 70th anniversary of her father's death.

“I’ve always thought that one of her philosophies really was that, you know, she just wanted to be a really good daughter to her father and fulfill all his hopes for her,’’ Vickers said. “And, you know, assuming that there is an after-life and they meet again, my goodness he will be able to thank her for doing just that.”

First Arabic Netflix film tackles taboos, sparks controversy

AP — Sat, 29 Jan 2022 11:34:00 +0300

A Lebanese father tells his teenage daughter she is free to choose whether to have sex with her boyfriend despite his reservations.

An Egyptian wife discreetly slips off her black, lacy underwear from under her clothes before heading out for dinner, and it’s not her husband she’s trying to tantalize.

And in a dramatic moment, a man reveals that he is gay, a secret he has kept from his longtime friends who are shocked — but seem mostly accepting.

The scenes in the first Arabic Netflix movie have sparked a public drama as intense as the one that plays out onscreen. On social media and TV talk shows and among friends in Egypt and other Middle East countries, a torrent of critics have denounced the film as a threat to family and religious values, encouraging homosexuality and unfit for Arab societies.

Others have rallied to the film’s defense, saying detractors are in denial about what happens behind closed doors in real life. Those who don’t like the movie, they argue, are free to not subscribe to Netflix or simply skip the film.

Titled “Ashab Wala A’azz,” which means “No Dearer Friends,” the movie is an Arabic version of the Italian hit “Perfect Strangers,” which has inspired many other international remakes. It tells the story of seven friends at a dinner party gone wrong after the hostess suggests that, as a game, they agree to share any calls, text and voice messages. As smart phones buzz, secrets are revealed, infidelities are exposed and relationships are tested.

The controversy has re-ignited debates in the region over artistic freedom versus social and religious sensitivities; censorship; what constitutes a taboo in different societies and portrayal of gay characters.

One irony is that Netflix in the Middle East shows many non-Arabic movies and series that feature gay characters in a positive light, premarital and extramarital sex and even nudity — which is typically banned in cinemas in the region — with little outcry.

But to see those themes broached in an Arabic-language movie with Arab actors went too far for some. (The movie has no nudity; it’s largely an hour and half of people talking around a dinner table.)

“I think if it’s a normal foreign movie, I will be ok. But because it’s an Arabic movie, I didn’t accept it,” said 37-year-old Elham, an Egyptian who asked for her last name to be withheld due to the sensitivity of the topic. “We don’t accept the idea of homosexuality or intimate relations before marriage in our society, so what happened was a cultural shock.”

Homosexuality is a particularly strong taboo in Egypt: A 2013 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 95% in the country say it should be rejected by society; in Lebanon, that number stood at 80% at the time.

The movie’s cast are mostly prominent Lebanese stars and its events are set in Lebanon. There, it has garnered many positive reviews. Fans said it discussed relatable topics away from stereotypes that are usually attached to gay characters or cheating spouses on screen.

“There’s nothing like the Arab world’s hatred of the truth,” Rabih Farran, a Lebanese journalist, said in a tweet, referring to the backlash.

It’s not the first time that an Arabic-language movie has featured gay characters.

Most famously, the 2006 movie “The Yacoubian Building” with a cast of A-list Egyptian actors caused a stir for, among other things, including a gay main character. But the character was ultimately killed by his lover in what many saw as punishment.

In contrast, the gay character in “Ashab Wala A’azz” is not depicted negatively. Another character encourages him to expose his former employers who let him go for his sexual identity.

Fatima Kamal, a 43-year-old Egyptian, said she didn’t find it to be promoting same-sex relationships. She argued that some Egyptian movies in the past were more daring.

“The movie touched on issues that the society refuses to confront but they do happen,” she said. “We all have a dark side and hidden stories.”

Kamal, who has a 12-year-old son, also dismissed the idea the film would corrupt Arab youth.

“Technology has changed society. Restricting movies is not the answer,” she said. “The solution is to watch based on age ratings and to talk to the young and make them understand that not everything we see on the screen is OK.”

Talking on a popular TV show, Egyptian lawmaker Mostafa Bakry contended Egyptian and Arab family values are being targeted.

“This is neither art nor creativity,” he said. “We must ban Netflix from being in Egypt” even if temporarily.

Magda Maurice, an art critic debating Bakry on the show, disagreed. “This movie exposes what mobile phones do to people and to their normal lives,” she said.

“You cannot ban anything now but you can confront it with good art,” she added. “Banning has become a thing of the past.”

In Egypt, much of the furor focused on the sole Egyptian woman in the cast, Mona Zaki, one of the country’s biggest stars. Her character is the one seen slipping off her underwear, a gesture that many critics decried as scandalous.

In social media, some attacked her for participating in the film. The online abuse extended to actors and actresses who supported her or praised her performance. Some criticized her real-life husband, an Egyptian movie star in his own right, for “allowing” her to play the role.

The Egyptian actors syndicate came out in support of Zaki, saying it will not abide verbal abuse or intimidation against actors over their work. It said that freedom of creativity “is protected and defended by the syndicate,” while adding that it is committed to the values of Egyptian society.

The Associated Press reached out to Netflix for a comment on the controversy but didn’t receive one.

Egypt has long celebrated its cinema industry, which earned it the nickname “Hollywood of the East,” lured actors from other Arabic-speaking countries and brought Egyptian movies and dialect into Arab homes the world over.

Film critic Khaled Mahmoud said Egypt "used to produce powerful and daring movies in the 1960s and 1970s.” But much of that adventurousness has been lost with the trend of so-called “clean cinema,” emphasizing themes deemed family appropriate with no physical intimacy or immodest attire, he added.

“Society has changed, and the viewership culture has become flawed."

Story lines about affairs or sexual relations are not uncommon in Arabic films. But female stars are commonly grilled in interviews over whether they would agree to wear swimsuits or kiss co-stars on camera.

“Our job is to let art be art,” Mahmoud said. “We cannot critique art through a moral lens.”

Iconic musician seeks to rebuild Iraq through music

AP — Tue, 25 Jan 2022 17:42:00 +0300

War kept him away from his beloved homeland for decades. Now, virtuoso oud player Naseer Shamma hopes to help rebuild conflict-scarred Iraq through a series of concerts and other projects to support culture and education.

The audience at the Iraqi National Theater were on their feet, overcome with emotion as Shamma played a night of classics from the Iraqi songbook and modern compositions.

“We will work on lighting the stage, to get out of the darkness into the light,” he told the crowd, before kicking off the evening with, “Sabah El Kheir Ya Baghdad,” or, “Good Morning Baghdad.” Behind him, an orchestra, including young women musicians, played traditional instruments.

The 59-year-old Shamma is considered a modern-day master of the oud, a pear-shaped stringed instrument similar to a lute whose deep tones and swift-changing chords are central to Arabic music.

Born in the southern city of Kut and raised in a conservative family, he received his first oud lesson at the age of 11 and later graduated from the Baghdad Academy of Music in 1987.

He fled Iraq in 1993 during Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and gained international fame, performing around the world and receiving dozens of awards. In Cairo, he founded the House of the Oud, a school dedicated to teaching the instrument to new generations.

Shamma, who currently lives in Berlin, returned to Iraq for the first time in 2012 to perform in a concert hosted by the Arab League. He said he was shocked and overwhelmed with sadness to see what had become of his country, which had fallen into non-ending cycles of war and sectarian blood-letting after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam.

“I found concrete T-walls surrounding Baghdad, I felt like I was walking inside a can, not a city,” Shamma told The Associated Press in an interview, referring to the blast walls that line many streets in Baghdad.

He returned several times since, most recently in 2017, when Iraq was torn apart in its battle with Islamic State group militants who had captured much of the north.

This was Shamma’s first time back to an Iraq relatively at peace, though wracked by economic crisis. The mood, he noted, had changed, the city is more relaxed and the audience more responsive.

“The audience’s artistic taste had changed as a result of wars, but last night it was similar to the audiences of the ’80s. I felt as if it was in an international concert like one in Berlin,” Shamma said Friday after the first of four concerts he is holding in Baghdad this month.

The concert series, held under the slogan “Education First,” aims to highlight Iraq’s decaying education system, which has suffered under years of conflict, government negligence and corruption. According to the World Bank, education levels in Iraq, once among the highest in the region, are now among the lowest in the Middle East and North Africa. Ticket sales will go toward renovating the Music and Ballet School in Baghdad.

“In Iraq there are still schools made of mud, and students don’t have desks, they sit on the floor,” Shamma said. “Education is the solution and answer for the future of Iraq.”

Shamma is known for using his fame to support humanitarian causes, Iraqi children and art. A few years ago, he led an initiative that rebuilt the destroyed infrastructure of 21 main squares in Baghdad. He is also a UNESCO peace ambassador.

Shamma said he hopes he can return to Iraq for good in the near future and fired off a list of projects he has in mind to support reconstruction.

He expressed his opposition to religious parties who try to silence art and political opponents and praised Iraqi youth who paid a high price for revolting against their corruption.

“The Iraqi people and Iraqi youth will not accept the hegemony of so-called religious parties. This is an open country where culture plays a very big role,” he said, advocating for separation of politics from religion.

Fatima Mohammed, a 55-year-old Iraqi woman, shivering from the cold as she emerged from the concert on an uncharacteristically icy January evening, said the event was a message to everyone that Baghdad will never die.

“I felt as I witnessed the women playing that Baghdad is fine and will return despite all the pain that we carry with us,” she said.

“I will come tomorrow also to listen to music, it gives me hope in life.”

UNESCO lists Viking-era wooden sailboats on heritage list

Sun, 23 Jan 2022 10:53:00 +0300

ROSKILDE, Denmark (AP) — For thousands of years, wooden sailboats allowed the peoples of Northern Europe to spread trade, influence and sometimes war across seas and continents.

In December, the U.N.’s culture agency added Nordic “clinker boats" to its list of traditions that represent the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden jointly sought the UNESCO designation.

The term “clinker” is thought to refer to the way the boat’s wooden boards were fastened together.

Supporters of the successful nomination hope it will safeguard and preserve the boat-building techniques that drove the Viking era for future generations as the number of active clinker craftsmen fades and fishermen and others opt for vessels with cheaper glass fiber hulls.

“We can see that the skills of building them, the skills of sailing the boats, the knowledge of people who are sailing … it goes down and it disappears,” said Søren Nielsen, head of boatyard at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, west of Copenhagen.

The museum not only exhibits the remains of wooden vessels built 1,000 years ago, but also works to rebuild and reconstruct other Viking boats. The process involves using experimental archaeological methods to gain a deeper, more practical understanding of the Viking Age, such as how quickly the vessels sailed and how many people they carried.

Nielsen, who oversees the construction and repair of wooden boats built in the clinker tradition, said there are only about 20 practicing clinker boat craftsmen in Denmark, perhaps 200 across all of northern Europe.

“We think it’s a tradition we have to show off, and we have to tell people this was a part of our background,” he told The Associated Press.

Wooden clinker boats are characterized by the use of overlapping longitudinal wooden hull planks that are sewn or riveted together.

Builders strengthen the boats internally by additional wooden components, mainly tall oak trees, which constitute the ribs of the vessel. They stuff the gaps in between with tar or tallow mixed with animal hair, wool and moss.

“When you build it with these overlaps within it, you get a hull that’s quite flexible but at the same time, incredibly strong,” explained Triona Sørensen, curator at Roskilde’s Viking Ship Museum, which is home to to the remains of five 11th-century Viking boats built with clinker methods.

Nielsen said there is evidence the clinker technique first appeared thousands of years ago, during the Bronze Age.

But it was during the Viking Age that clinker boats had their zenith, according to Sørensen. The era, from 793 to 1066, is when Norsemen, or Vikings, undertook large-scale raiding, colonizing, conquest and trading voyages throughout Europe. They also reached North America.

Their light, strong and swift ships were unsurpassed in their time and provided the foundations for kingdoms in Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

If "you hadn’t had any ships, you wouldn’t have had any Viking Age,” said Sørensen. “It just literally made it possible for them to expand that kind of horizon to become a more global people."

While the clinker boat tradition in Northern Europe remains to this day, the ships are used by hobbyists, for festivities, regattas and sporting events, rather than raiding and conquest seen 1,000 years ago.

The UNESCO nomination was signed by around 200 communities and cultural bearers in the field of construction and traditional clinker boat craftsmanship, including Sami communities.

The inscription on the Intangible Cultural Heritage list obliges the Nordic countries to try to preserve what remains of the fading tradition.

“You cannot read how to build a boat in a book, so if you want to be a good boat builder, you have to build a lot of boats,” the Viking Ship Museum's Nielsen said. “If you want to keep these skills alive, you have to keep them going.”

Will Smith, Lady Gaga, Ben Affleck score SAG nominations

Wed, 12 Jan 2022 21:24:13 +0300

NEW YORK (AP) — The Oscar race may be missing in-person glitz this year, but it doesn't lack for star power. Will Smith, Lady Gaga and Ben Affleck landed individual nominations for the 28th Screen Actors Guild Awards on Wednesday, while the casts of “Belfast” and “CODA” were among those nominated for the guild's top award, best ensemble.

The nominees were announced Wednesday by actors Vanessa Hudgens and Rosario Dawson on Instagram Live. While the nominations were conducted virtually due to the surge in COVID-19 cases, the streamed announcement still represented one of the most meaningful mornings in an awards season largely snuffed out by the pandemic.

Joining Kenneth Branagh’s semi-autobiographical “Belfast” and the coming-of-age drama “CODA” for best ensemble were the casts for Ridley Scott's true-tale, high-camp “House of Gucci,” Adam McKay's apocalypse comedy “Don't Look Up" and the family tennis drama “King Richard.” Notably left out were the casts of Steven Spielberg's lavish “West Side Story” revival (which landed a supporting nod for Ariana DeBose) and Jane Campion's “The Power of the Dog.” Campion's gothic drama, though, landed individual SAG noms for Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst and Kodi Smit-McPhee.

The SAG Awards have more of the awards season spotlight this year since the Golden Globes — usually the kickoff party to final Oscar stretch — made barely a peep. The Globes were unceremoniously announced Sunday on Twitter in a private ceremony due to Hollywood's boycott of the beleaguered Hollywood Foreign Press Association over diversity and ethical issues. The omicron surge also prompted the Critics Choice Awards to postpone its January 9 in-person gala. For the second straight year, Oscar season has gone virtual — and struggled to make much noise.

But the SAG nominations suggest that plenty of famous faces are in the hunt this year. Along with Will Smith ("King Richard") and Cumberbatch, the nominees for best male lead actor are: Denzel Washington ("The Tragedy of Macbeth"), Andrew Garfield ("Tick, Tick ... Boom!") and Javier Bardem ("Being the Ricardos").

Up for best female lead are: Lady Gaga ("House of Gucci"), Jessica Chastain ("The Eyes of Tammy Faye"), Olivia Colman ("The Lost Daughter"), Nicole Kidman ("Being the Ricardos") and Jennifer Hudson ("Respect").

Joining Dunst and DeBose in the best female supporting category are Caitriona Balfe ("Belfast"), Cate Blanchett ("Nightmare Alley”) and Ruth Negga ("Passing"). The best male supporting nominees are: Affleck ("The Tender Bar"), Bradley Cooper ("Licorice Pizza”), Troy Kotsur ("CODA"), Jared Leto (“House of Gucci”) and Smit-McPhee.

Kotsur is the first deaf actor to land an individual SAG nomination.

The SAG Awards, presented by the actors guild SAG-AFTRA, are among the most reliable Oscar bellwethers. Seldom does a movie or performance not nominated by the screen actors end up winning at the Academy Awards. Actors make up the biggest percentage of the film academy, so their choices have the largest sway.

But last year, SAG and the academy diverged more than usual. Only one of its acting winners — Daniel Kaluuya ("Judas and the Black Messiah") — repeated at the Oscars. (The other SAG winners were Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis in “Ma Rainey's Black Bottom,” and Yuh-Jung Youn in “Minari.") The Aaron Sorkin courtroom drama “The Trial of the Chicago 7” won best ensemble at a virtual SAG Awards while Chloé Zhao's “Nomadland” — which included many nonprofessional actors and went unnominated for SAG's ensemble award — triumphed at the Oscars.

That history will give hope to supporters of Kristen Stewart ("Spencer"), maybe the most notable performer overlooked Wednesday. Others that missed out include Peter Dinklage ("Cyrano"), Ciarán Hinds ("Belfast") and Rachel Zegler ("West Side Story").

While some have rooted for some of the year's most popular blockbusters to give the flagging Oscars a populist jolt, “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” “Dune” and “No Time To Die” received no major nominations from the actors guild. “Dune” and “No Time to Die” did, though, join “Black Widow,” “The Matrix Resurrections” and “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” in the stunt ensemble category.

Yet possibly the most popular TV series of 2021 did haul in plenty of recognition. Netflix's much-watched “Squid Game” was nominated for four SAG awards including best drama series. The television nominations were also led by HBO's “Succession” (four nods including best drama series and best actor for Jeremy Strong and Brian Cox); “Ted Lasso” (five nods including best comedy series); and “The Morning Show” (four nods including best drama series).

The 28th annual SAG Awards are to be held Feb. 27 and will be broadcast on TNT and TBS. The Oscars are scheduled for March 27.

Betty White, TV’s Golden Girl, dies at 99

Sat, 01 Jan 2022 00:40:00 +0300

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Betty White, whose saucy, up-for-anything charm made her a television mainstay for more than 60 years, whether as a man-crazy TV hostess on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” or the loopy housemate on “The Golden Girls,” has died. She was 99.

White’s death was confirmed Friday by Jeff Witjas, her longtime agent and friend. She would have turned 100 on Jan. 17.

“I truly never thought she was going to pass away," Witjas told The Associated Press. “She meant the world to me as a friend. She was the most positive person I've ever known.”

Witjas said White had been staying close to her Los Angeles home during the pandemic out of caution but had no diagnosed illness. It was unclear if she died Thursday night or Friday, he said.

Her death brought tributes from celebrities and politicians alike.

“We loved Betty White,” first lady Jill Biden said as she and President Joe Biden left a restaurant in Wilmington, Delaware. Added the president: “Ninety-nine years old. As my mother would say, ‘God love her.’”

“She was great at defying expectation,” Ryan Reynolds, who starred alongside her in the comedy “The Proposal,” tweeted. “She managed to grow very old and somehow, not old enough. We’ll miss you, Betty.”

White launched her TV career in daytime talk shows when the medium was still in its infancy and endured well into the age of cable and streaming. Her combination of sweetness and edginess gave life to a roster of quirky characters in shows from the sitcom “Life With Elizabeth” in the early 1950s to oddball Rose Nylund in “The Golden Girls” in the ’80s to “Boston Legal,” which ran from 2004 to 2008.

But it was in 2010 that White’s stardom erupted as never before.

In a Snickers commercial that premiered during that year’s Super Bowl telecast, she impersonated an energy-sapped dude getting tackled during a backlot football game.

“Mike, you’re playing like Betty White out there,” jeered one of his chums. White, flat on the ground and covered in mud, fired back, “That’s not what your girlfriend said!”

The instantly-viral video helped spark a Facebook campaign called “Betty White to Host SNL (please?)!,” whose half-million fans led to her co-hosting “Saturday Night Live” in a much-watched, much-hailed edition that Mother’s Day weekend. The appearance won her a seventh Emmy award.

A month later, cable’s TV Land premiered “Hot In Cleveland,” the network’s first original scripted series, which starred Valerie Bertinelli, Jane Leeves and Wendie Malick as three past-their-prime show-biz veterans who move to Cleveland to escape the youth obsession of Hollywood. They move into a home being looked after by an elderly Polish widow — a character, played by White, who was meant to appear only in the pilot episode.

But White stole the show, and the salty Elka Ostrovsky became a key part of the series, an immediate hit. She was voted the Entertainer of the Year by members of The Associated Press.

“It’s ridiculous,” White said of the honor. “They haven’t caught on to me, and I hope they never do.”

By then, White had not only become the hippest star around, but also a role model for how to grow old joyously.

“Don’t try to be young,” she told The AP. “Just open your mind. Stay interested in stuff. There are so many things I won’t live long enough to find out about, but I’m still curious about them.”

Such was her popularity that even White’s birthday became a national event: In January 2012, NBC aired “Betty White’s 90th Birthday Party” as a star-studded prime-time special. She would later appear in such series as “Bones” and "Fireside Chat With Esther” and in 2019 gave voice to one of the toys, “Bitey White,” in “Toy Story 4.”

In a People cover story on White's upcoming 100th birthday, the magazine's Jan. 10 issue touted White's secrets for longevity and quoted her as saying, “Funny never gets old."

Witjas said it was as if Betty insisted on a last laugh: “It's a wonderful tribute, and she has to pull this."

A film honoring White on her birthday will be released as planned for a one-day showing in more than 900 theaters nationwide, said Steve Boettcher and Mike Trinklein, producers of “Betty White: 100 Years Young — A Birthday Celebration."

“We will go forward with our plans to show the film on Jan. 17 in hopes our film will provide a way for all who loved her to celebrate her life — and experience what made her such a national treasure,” they said in a statement.

White remained youthful in part through her skill at playing bawdy or naughty while radiating niceness. The horror spoof “Lake Placid” and “The Proposal” were marked by her characters’ surprisingly salty language. And her character Catherine Piper killed a man with a skillet on “Boston Legal.”

But she almost wasn’t cast as “Happy Homemaker” Sue Ann Nivens in “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” in 1973. She and her husband, Allen Ludden, were close friends of Moore and Moore’s then-husband, producer Grant Tinker. It was feared that if White failed on the show, which already was a huge hit, it would be embarrassing for all four. But CBS casting head Ethel Winant declared White the logical choice. Originally planned as a one-shot appearance, the role of Sue Ann (which humorously foreshadowed Martha Stewart) lasted until Moore ended the series in 1977.

“While she’s icky-sweet on her cooking show, Sue is really a piranha type,” White once said. The role brought her two Emmys as supporting actress in a comedy series.

In 1985, White starred on NBC with Bea Arthur, Rue McClanahan and Estelle Getty in “The Golden Girls.” Its cast of mature actors, playing single women in Miami retirement, presented a gamble in a youth-conscious industry. But it proved a solid hit and lasted until 1992.

White played Rose, a gentle, dim widow who managed to misinterpret most situations. She drove her roommates crazy with off-the-wall tales of childhood in fictional St. Olaf, Minnesota, an off-kilter version of Lake Wobegon.

The role won her another Emmy, and she reprised it in a short-lived spinoff, “The Golden Palace.”

After her co-star Arthur died in 2009, White told “Entertainment Tonight”: “She showed me how to be very brave in playing comedy. I’ll miss that courage.”

White’s other TV series included “Mama’s Family,” as Vicki Lawrence’s daughter; “Just Men,” a game show in which women tried to predict answers to questions directed to male celebrities; and “Ladies Man,” as the catty mother of Alfred Molina.

“Just Men” brought her a daytime Emmy, while she won a fourth prime time Emmy in 1996 for a guest shot on “The John Larroquette Show.”

She also appeared in numerous miniseries and TV movies and made her film debut as a female U.S. senator in Otto Preminger’s 1962 Capitol Hill drama “Advise and Consent.”

White began her television career as $50-a-week sidekick to a local Los Angeles TV personality in 1949. She was hired for a local daytime show starring Al Jarvis, the best-known disc jockey in Los Angeles.

It was then she got a tip to start lying about her age.

“We are so age-conscious in this country,” she said in a 2011 interview with The Associated Press. “It’s silly, but that’s the way we are. So I was told, ‘Knock four years off right now. You’ll be blessing yourself down the road.’

“I was born in 1922. So I thought, ‘I must always remember that I was born in 1926.’ But then I would have to do the math. Finally, I decided to heck with it.”

White proved to be a natural for the new medium. She was bright, pretty and likable, with a dimpled, eye-crinkling smile. A 1951 Los Angeles Times headline said: “Betty White Hailed as TV’s Busiest Gal.”

“I did that show 5½ hours a day, six days a week, for 4½ years,” she recalled in 1975. Jarvis was replaced by actor Eddie Albert, and when he went to Europe for the film “Roman Holiday,” she headed the show.

A sketch she had done with Jarvis turned into a syndicated series, “Life With Elizabeth,” which won her first Emmy. For a time she did interviews on “The Betty White Show” in the daytime, filmed the series at night and often turned up on a late-night talk show. She also appeared on commercials and every New Year’s narrated the Pasadena Rose Parade.

With the glib tongue and quick responses nurtured in the Jarvis years, she was a welcome guest on “I’ve Got a Secret,” “To Tell the Truth,” “What’s My Line” and other game shows — all the way up to the 2008 “Million Dollar Password,” which revived the game once hosted by Ludden, whom she had met when a contestant on his original “Password.”

That was in 1961, and the next year, while touring in summer theater during television’s off season, she starred with Ludden — by then a widower with three children — in the comedy “Critic’s Choice.”

White, who had claimed to be “militantly single” since a 1947-1949 marriage, weakened in her resolve.

“I had always said on `The Tonight Show’ and everywhere else that I would never get married again,” she told a reporter in 1963. “But Allen outnumbered me. He started in and even the children got in the act. And I surrendered — willingly.”

The marriage lasted from 1963 until his death from cancer in 1981.

Off-screen, White tirelessly raised money for animal causes such as the Morris Animal Foundation and the Los Angeles Zoo. In 1970-1971, she wrote, produced and hosted a syndicated TV show, “The Pet Set,” to which celebrities brought their dogs and cats. She wrote a 1983 book titled “Betty White’s Pet Love: How Pets Take Care of Us,” and, in 2011, published “Betty & Friends: My Life at the Zoo.”

Her devotion to pets was such that she declined a plum role in the hit 1997 movie “As Good As It Gets.” She objected to a scene in which Jack Nicholson drops a small dog down a laundry chute.

In her 2011 book “If You Ask Me (And Of Course You Won’t),” White explained the origins of her love for dogs. During the Depression, her dad made radios to sell to make extra money. But since few people had money to buy the radios, he willingly traded them for dogs, which, housed in kennels in the backyard, at times numbered as many as 15 and made White’s happy childhood even happier.

Are there any critters she doesn’t like?

“No,” White told the AP. “Anything with a leg on each corner.”

Then what about snakes?

“Ohhh, I LOVE snakes!”

She was born Betty Marion White in Oak Park, Illinois, and the family moved to Los Angeles when she was a toddler.

“I’m an only child, and I had a mother and dad who never drew a straight line: They just thought funny,” she told The Associated Press in 2015. “We’d sit around the breakfast table and then we’d start kicking it around. My dad was a salesman and he would come home with jokes. He’d say, `Sweetheart, you can take THAT one to school. But I wouldn’t take THIS one.′ We had such a wonderful time.”

Her early ambition was to be a writer, and she wrote her grammar school graduation play, giving herself the leading role.

At Beverly Hills High School, her ambition turned to acting, and she appeared in several school plays. Her parents hoped she’d go to college, but instead she took roles in a small theater and played bit parts in radio dramas.

Explaining in 2011 how she kept up her frantic pace even as an octogenarian, she explained that she only needed four hours of sleep each night.

And when asked how she had managed to be universally beloved during her decades-spanning career, she summed up with a dimpled smile: “I just make it my business to get along with people so I can have fun. It’s that simple.”

‘Spider-Man’ surpasses $1B globally in second weekend

AP — Mon, 27 Dec 2021 07:57:00 +0300

Peter Parker’s good fortune continued over the holiday weekend as Hollywood prepares to close the books on a turbulent 2021. Even with some mighty competition from new Matrix and Sing movies, and rising concerns over the omicron variant, “Spider-Man: No Way Home” stayed in the No. 1 spot and netted a few more milestones too including crossing the $1 billion mark globally.

According to studio estimates Sunday “Spider-Man” added $81.5 million over the three-day weekend, down 69% from its first weekend. The Sony and Marvel film has now grossed $467 million from North American theaters, more than doubling the domestic grosses of 2021′s previous No. 1 film, “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.”

With $587.1 million from 61 overseas markets, in just 12 days of release, “Spider-Man" has grossed $1.05 billion globally. It's the first film of the pandemic to cross $1 billion and is tied with “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” for being the third-fastest film ever to do so — and this without the benefit of its release in China.

Universal’s “Sing 2” came in second place with an estimated $23.8 million, while Warner Bros.' “The Matrix Resurrections” grossed $12 million to take third place.

The animated musical “Sing 2” features high-profile celebrity talent including Matthew McConaughey, Scarlett Johansson, Reese Witherspoon and Bono, as well as a jukebox soundtrack full of well-known hits. Since its release Wednesday, it’s made $41 million ($1.6 million of that came from Thanksgiving weekend showings) from North America and $65 million worldwide.

“We’re extraordinarily pleased,” said Jim Orr, Universal's president of domestic distribution.

Orr said the stellar CinemaScore (A+) and audience scores suggest that the film will continue to perform well in the next few weeks, when many kids are still out of school for the holidays.

The fourth Matrix also opened on Wednesday and has earned an estimated $22.5 million in its first five days in North America. The film, directed by Lana Wachowski and starring Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss, is currently streaming on HBO Max as well. Globally, it’s grossed $69.8 million to date.

While the studio was hoping for a stronger box office, Jeff Goldstein, Warner Bros.' head of domestic distribution, said the movie achieved what they were looking for as an overall strategy including HBO Max.

“The Matrix Resurrections" is the last of the 18 Warner Bros. films released in 2021 to debut both in theaters and on HBO Max simultaneously. Starting in 2022, the studio will have a 45-day exclusive theatrical window on their films.

In fourth place was Disney and 20th Century’s “The King’s Man,” a prequel to the action-comedy Kingsman series starring Ralph Fiennes. It came in slightly under expectations with $6.4 million from the weekend and $10 million from its first five days. The audience skewed heavily male (65%).

The Kurt Warner biopic “American Underdog” opened on Christmas Day and has made an estimated $6.2 million in its two days in release to round out the top five. Zachary Levi stars as Warner, the quarterback who went from undrafted free agent to Hall of Famer.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza” expanded nationwide on Christmas, after playing in limited release for a month, and added $2.3 million bringing its total to $3.7 million. And right behind it was the Denzel Washington-directed drama “A Journal For Jordan,” which to $2.2 million.

With just a few days left in 2021, the North American box office is currently sitting at $4.3 billion and is likely to net out around $4.4 billion. Pre-pandemic, it was normal for a year's box office to surpass $11 billion.

“To say was a roller-coaster year is an understatement,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore, Inc. “The marketplace is still facing challenges from the pandemic, but what an amazing capper to one of the most incredible years ever at the box office."

He added: “The future of the movie theater a year ago was a big question mark, and a year later it’s here to stay.”

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

1. “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” $81.5 million.

2. “Sing 2,” $23.8 million.

3. “The Matrix Resurrections,” $12 million.

4. “The King’s Man,” $6.4 million.

5. “American Underdog,” $6.2 million.

6. “West Side Story,” $2.8 million.

7. “Licorice Pizza,” $2.3 million.

8. “A Journal For Jordan,” $2.2 million.

9. “Encanto,” $2 million.

10. “83,” $1.8 million.

Jordan withdraws the movie “Princess” from the Oscar nominations.. for this reason

Agencies — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 18:33:00 +0300

The Royal Film Commission of Jordan decided today, Thursday, to withdraw the nomination of the movie “Princess” from the competition for the Oscar for Best International Film, which is reserved for films produced outside the United States.

The film, starring Jordanian Saba Mubarak and Palestinian Ali Suleiman, directed by Egyptian Mohamed Diab, deals with the story of a Palestinian girl who was born by insemination from smuggled sperm to her father who is in Israeli prisons, but when trying to repeat the experience, the doctors discover a surprise that shakes the life of the girl and her family.

The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September, and its director won two awards for his work before starting his tour of Arab festivals, which included the El Gouna Film Festival and the Carthage Film Festival in Tunisia. The vernacular expression of smuggled sperm children.

The Royal Film Commission of Jordan said in a statement, “We appreciate the artistic value of the film and believe that it does not in any way affect the Palestinian cause or the issue of the prisoners, but on the contrary, it highlights their plight and resistance. This was the opinion of the members of the independent selection committee that was formed and chose the film from Ben other films to represent the kingdom.”

“But in light of the great controversy raised by the film and its interpretation by some that it affects the Palestinian cause and out of respect for the feelings of the prisoners and their families, the Royal Film Commission decided to refrain from presenting a “princess” to represent Jordan in the Oscars,” she added.

The decision came days before the US Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the preliminary list of films accepted into the international film category on December 21.

Yesterday, Wednesday, the film’s family issued a statement saying, “It was fully understood by the film’s family, the sensitivity of the issue of sperm smuggling and the sanctity of children of freedom, and for this reason the decision was to declare that the story of the film is fictional and cannot happen.”

The statement continued, “The film’s family understands the anger experienced by many over what they think is an insult to the prisoners and their families, and it is a national anger that we understand, but we hoped that the film would be watched before being judged for a transfer or fragmentation.”

The shortlist for the films competing in the Best International Film category at the Oscars will be announced on February 8, 2022, while the announcement and award ceremony will take place on March 27.

ABBA tops UK chart with first studio album since 1981

AFP — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 22:49:54 +0300

London (AFP) – ABBA's first studio album in nearly 40 years has made it to the top of the UK charts, becoming the fastest seller of the year so far, the Official Charts Company said on Friday.

"Voyage" by the Swedish quartet of Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny and Anni-Frid racked up 204,000 chart sales in the seven days since it was launched last Friday.

Sales gave the supergroup the biggest opening week on the UK album chart in four years since Ed Sheeran's "Divide", and fastest-selling album by a group in eight years.

The last fastest-seller was One Direction's "Midnight Memories" in November 2013.

ABBA, propelled to global fame by their 1974 Eurovision Song Contest win with "Waterloo", split in 1982, a year after their last album, "The Visitors".

"Voyage" is their 10th number one album in the UK: only seven other acts -- The Beatles, Elvis Presley, the Rolling Stones, Robbie Williams, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen and David Bowie -- have had more.

The group said in a statement: "We are so happy that our fans seem to have enjoyed our new album as much as we enjoyed making it.

"We are absolutely over the moon to have an album at the top of the charts again."

The 204,000 sales comprise 90 percent physical copies, including 29,900 on vinyl, making it the fastest-selling vinyl release of the 21st century.

The previous record holder was the Arctic Monkeys' "Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino", which sold 24,500 vinyl copies in 2018.

Omar El Akkad wins Canadian literature award

Tue, 09 Nov 2021 12:36:00 +0300

TORONTO (AP) — Omar El Akkad, an Egyptian-Canadian author and journalist, the author of a story of the global refugee crisis through the eyes of a child, has won Canada’s richest literary award.

El Akkad won the Scotiabank Giller Prize for his book “What Strange Paradise” on Monday night. The former Globe and Mail journalist received the honor at a nationally televised Toronto gala Monday night.

“What Strange Paradise,” published by McClelland & Stewart, is a novel about two children caught in the global refugee crisis.

The story alternates between the perspectives of Amir, a Syrian boy who survives a shipwreck on an unnamed island, and Vänna, the local teenage girl who saves him

El Akkad, 39, moved to Canada when he was 16, and went to high school in Montreal before attending Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. He lived in Toronto for about a decade, and did a stint in Ottawa as a Parliament Hill reporter.

The Portland, Ore.-based author won critical and commercial success with his debut 2017 novel, “American War,” which won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, the Oregon Book Award for fiction, and the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize.

Monday night’s black-tie affair reinstated the Giller as the bash of the fall books season after last year’s celebration was held remotely because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Organizers slashed the usual guest list by more than half to facilitate social distancing, and attendees were required to show proof of vaccination to take part in the festivities.

The Giller Prize is considered one of the most prestigious in Canadian literature. Past winners have included Margaret Atwood, Mordecai Richler and Alice Munro.

The Giller was created in 1994 by businessman Jack Rabinovitch in memory of his late wife, literary journalist Doris Giller. It honors the best in Canadian fiction.