Screen/Society--Documenting the Middle East--"The Wanted 18" + "Al-Nakba and the City of Lyd: A Work in Progress"

Thursday, April 13, 2017 - 3:00pm to 4:45pm
Screen/Society--Documenting the Middle East--"The Wanted 18" + "Al-Nakba and the City of Lyd: A Work in Progress"

Film Screening:

-- Introduced by Nancy Kalow (Center for Documentary Studies)

-- Q&A to follow with Sarah Friedland, Nancy Kalow, and Sofia Farah, a UNC graduate student from nearby the town where The Wanted 18 takes place!

Works to be screened:

10 min trailer for: Al-Nakba and the City of Lyd: A Work in Progress
(Director - Sarah Friedland; Rami Younis - Writer/Producer; Fivel Rothberg - Producer)

and

The Wanted 18
(Paul Cowan & Amer Shomali, 2014, 75 min, Canada/Palestine/France, in Arabic and English w/ English Subtitles, Color/B&W, Digital)

It's 1987, and the first Palestinian popular movement in the West Bank is rising, Residents want local alternatives to Israeli goods, including milk, which they've been buying from an Israeli company. And so begins the strange story of the 18 cows.

The plot is hatched by pacifist intellectuals and professionals. Not you typical dairy farmers. These "lactivists" forge ahead anyway, buying 18 cows and smuggling them into the West Bank town of Beit Sahour.

But who know anything about the cows? These newly min ted farmers have to learn the most basic skills - even how to milk their charges, which isn't as easy as it looks.

Eventually, the cows come to the attention of Israeli authorities, and the chase is on - a cat-and-mouse (or soldier-and-cow) game writ large, as the cows shuttle from barn to barn, with their pursuers determined to find them. The cows became legendary and the "intifada milk" (sometimes distributed under cover of darkness) becomes a part of daily life.

-- Winner for Best Documentary from the Arab World at Abu Dhabi Film Festival (2014)!

 

 

 

 

 

"The film is funny and serious, it's one of the greatest films I've seen in the past ten years" - Intishal al Timini, Abu Dhabi Film Festival   

“Imaginatively interspersing testimonials with reenactments, comic panels and Claymation, the film plays out like an entertaining absurdist satire.” – Martin Tsai, LA Times

 

 

 

“At its best, The Wanted 18 follows a worthy tradition of highlighting absurdities that arise during conflict ...” – Ken Jaworowski, NY Times

 

 

 

Cost: Free and open to the public.

Sponsors: The Duke University Middle East Studies Center (DUMESC), AMES Presents, the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image (AMI), and Duke University Libraries.

White 107 (White Lecture Hall)