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Tabaq Al Sardine

The Plate of Sardines
Omar Amiralay
1997 France; Syria 17 minutes Arabic

“The first time I heard of Israel was in Beirut, talking about a dish of sardines. I was six years old, Israel was two.” The dish was the centrepiece on the table of the filmmaker’s aunt. She was raging against the sardines, as they represented the port where her husband worked since they had been forced to leave Palestine. Time had dispelled her anger. On the Golan Heights, the ruins of Quneitra destroyed by the Israeli army, a ruined film theatre, a filmmaker friend from the town (Mohamed Malas) and families shouting each other messages through a megaphone either side of a barbed wire fence: these are images of a past that painfully gnaws those separated by the Israeli-Syrian border. © Films Grain de sable / Omar Amiralay

Omar Amiralay

Né à Damas en 1944, décédé à Damas en 2011.
De 1965 à 1970, formation dans le théâtre et le cinéma à Paris. De 1970 à 1980, il réalise en Syrie un Film-essai sur l’Euphrate, La vie quotidienne dans un village syrien, Les poules, A propos d’une révolution. Depuis 1981, il tourne pour les chaînes de télévision françaises les films suivants : Le malheur des uns…, Benazir Bhutto La Sept, Un parfum de paradis, Le sarcophage de l’amour,Vidéo sur sable, L’ennemi intime, La dame de Shibam (TF1), A l’attention de Madame le Premier Ministre (TF1 – La Sept). Il retourne par la suite travailler en Syrie.

Production :
Arte France; Films du Grain de Sable
Editing :
Dominique Paris

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