Description:

Online screening of LEILA AND THE WOLVES followed by a pre-recorded discussion between filmmaker Heiny Srour and Dr. Rebecca C. Johnson

LEILA AND THE WOLVES
(Heiny Srour, 1984, Lebanon/UK, digital, 93 min)

Starting at 7 PM Central Time on October 8th, LEILA AND THE WOLVES will be available to watch on Block's Vimeo page for a 24-hour period. Please RSVP through Eventbrite.

Followed by a pre-recorded discussion between Heiny Srour and Dr. Rebecca C. Johnson

About the film:

Heiny Srour’s striking, inventive film features Nabila Zeitouni as Leila, a young Lebanese woman in London who time-travels through twentieth-century Lebanon and Palestine. It was Srour’s second film, after the landmark documentary THE HOUR OF LIBERATION HAS ARRIVED, and her only feature-length fiction film. LEILA AND THE WOLVES brings together elements of documentary and evocations of Arabian mythology. Srour conducted often-dangerous location shooting for several years, combining wondrous compositions with images from archival film to reconstruct conventional historical narratives. Focusing on women’s neglected political and social contributions, LEILA AND THE WOLVES brings a sharp feminist perspective to the region’s conflicted colonial past.

LEILA AND THE WOLVES made available courtesy of Cinenova: Feminist Film + Video

About the series:

Liberating History: Arab Feminisms and Mediated Pasts celebrates Arab women filmmakers. The films draw on archival material, Islamic visual culture, and ethnographic practice to bring a decolonial and feminist perspective to personal and national pasts. The series includes path-breaking films such as Heiny Srour’s LEILA AND THE WOLVES, which centers Arab women’s struggles in the region’s modern history, and Selma Baccar’s FATMA 75, an essay film combining history and fantasy, as well as other rare and recent selections from Middle East and North Africa. The series will also feature two nights of short films curated by the Habibi Collective.

Co-presented by The Block Museum of Art with support from the Middle East and North African Studies Program at NU and Cultural Services of the French Embassy