AL SIDR ENVIRONMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL 2023
The third edition of Al Sir Environmental Film Festival, founded and curated by Nezar Andary, returns this month, taking place in The Blue Hall at NYUAD Arts Center in Abu Dhabi between on October 22 and 23.
You can find the line up below, and registration links for each screening can be found here. The screenings are free to attend.
You can read my interview with Nezar from last year where we talked about the festival, you can read it here.
Sunday, October 22
3.00pm - Overwhelming Discoveries
Water and Activism
Presentation by Rasha Saleh, Environmentalist and founder of Enta Green.
The Whelming Sea (Sean Hanley, 2020, USA, 27 min)
Three animal lives entangle at the edge of the sea. Horseshoe crabs spawn on eroded urban beaches, migrating shorebirds seek sustenance at a midpoint, and humans attempt to make a difference in this age of mass extinction.
The First Days (Stéphane Breton, 2023, France, 74 min)
You have found yourself at the edge of the desert. The ocean was hitting hard. The beauty of chaos left you speechless. The strength of the gestures too, and the grace of the pebbles. You continued to be silent. What came out of Cuacua’s and Loco-loco’s mouths sounded like the sound of the waves. You listened to them with your eyes. You weren’t sure of what was happening, you were seeing it or hearing it. Music is born from the marriage of noise with silence.
5:30pm - Cultures of Resistance and Resilience
Water Strategies for the Future
Environmental Agency Presentation by Dr Mahmoud Dawoud.
The Land (Mohamad Sabbah, 2020, Lebanon, 27 min)
The Land documents the uprising of the people of Bisri and activists from all of Lebanon against the construction of the dangerous dam leading up to the Bisri Valley’s liberation. Farmers and shepherds discuss their fears of losing the land and their intimate relationship with it. It also presents the project’s seismic and geological dangers, its futility, the conflicts of interests surrounding its construction, and its destruction of a rich and significant area in every respect. The film ends during September 2020, when the World Bank resigned on funding the dam project, and this decision came as the most beautiful conclusion to the film and to the struggle of the activists.
Stepping Softly on Earth (Marcos Colon, 2022, Brazil/Peru, 73 min)
The film is a journey through images to the end of the world as we know it and to an immersion with the world that we have chosen not to know, but without which we will no longer exist. Three Indigenous leaders from the Amazon try to keep their ways of being in the world alive. This is the story of Kátia, chief of the Akrãtikatêjê people, of Manuel, chief of the Munduruku people and of José Manuyama, a teacher of Kokama origin. The three narrate the threats to their territories promoted by large-scale mining, monoculture, oil extraction, logging and the construction of hydroelectric plants. Interconnected by the voice and ancestral thoughts of Ailton Krenak, these accounts of resistance present us with other ways of existing and walking in the world.
7:30pm - The Ecological Conscious Rising
Selection of short films (10 min)
From Children’s Films from Al Reef Film Festival (Lebanon) and Dibeen Creative Lab Films (Jordan)
Everyday Life in a Syrian Village (Omar Amiralay, 1974, Syria, 83 min)
The first documentary to present an unabashed critique of the impact of the Syrian government’s agricultural and land reforms, Everyday Life in a Syrian Village delivers a powerful look at the state’s conceit of redressing social and economic inequities.
Monday, October 23
7:30pm - LISTENING TO LOSS: WATER AND CLIMATE CHANGE
And When I Die Let Me be Buried in a Hemlock Coffin, So I’ll Go Through Hell Snapping (Sarah Ema Friedland, 2022, USA, 8 min)
A Hemlock forest in Western Massachusetts that is dying due to the Woolly Adelgid beetle infestation tells a larger story about climate collapse and the interconnections between the natural and the built environments.
Drowning Fish (Amir al Shenawi, 2023, Egypt, 8 min)
Drowning Fish is a short documentary following one of the last fishermen in Qarun Lake in Fayoum, Egypt. Samir, a 67-year-old fisherman, lives in Shakshouk village where the entire community depends on fishing as a key source of income. Over the years, the lake has suffered from many pollution problems which made young fishermen in the village leave to coastal cities across Egypt while old fishermen live in memory of golden days of the lake. The film tells a simple story that spotlights on the consequences of damaging the ecosystem on the fishermen community in Egypt.
Whispers of Fire & Water (Lubdhak Chatterjee, 2023, India, 83 min)
Shiva, an audio installation artist, visits the largest coal mines of Eastern India that’s plagued by depleting resources. Faced with the highly complex socio- political system, he succumbs to the monstrous pressure. Fire, as an element, engulfs him. Shiva eventually moves to a tribal village in the forests. The panoply of sounds which he experiences triggers an inward journey which questions his urban gaze & notion of self. Water, as an element, forms the labyrinth of his quest for truth.