The Cape Cod Festival of Arab and Middle Eastern Cinema is a biennial showcase for fIlms from filmmakers in the Arab world, the Middle East, and the diaspora. The festival seeks to foster understanding about the cultures of these diverse countries and regions through the art of cinema and to bring Arab and Middle Eastern films to a receptive Cape Cod audience who might otherwise never see these films.
This year’s festival opens Thursday, May 4 with a screening of Assad Fouladkar’s Halal Love, a Lebanese comedy about regular everyday people working with their Muslim faith and their romantic entanglements, trying not to sacrifice either. The film will screen as part of the Opening Night festivities at the Chatham Orpheum Theater in Chatham, Mass., after a pre-screening reception featuring Middle Eastern hors d’oeuvres and cash bar.
The Closing Night film, is Farid Eslam’s Yallah! Underground, a documentary that features Arab musicians and artists in four countries (Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, and Israel), including Zeid Hamdan, Shadi Zaqtan, and Maii Waleed Yassin, with an eye toward music and art as political and social comment in an area of the world that has recently been experiencing a major cultural and generational shift. The screening is co-sponsored by WOMR-FM (92.1FM) Outermost Community Radio and will be held at their studios in Provincetown at 7 p.m. on Sunday, May 7.
The Cape Cod Festival of Arab & Middle Eastern Cinema was produced by Rebecca Alvin’s Cape Cod Film Society, a project of the Provincetown Community Compact, a not for profit 501(c)3 organization. This program received support from the Chatham Local Cultural Council, Provincetown Local Cultural Council, a
nd Wellfleet Local Cultural Council.
The Cape Cod Film Society 