Arabic Hour
The Arabic Hour is a production of the American Arab Media Foundation, a non-profit organization registered in Massachusetts. For the past twenty seven years, The Arabic Hour has been made possible only through the efforts and dedication of an all-volunteer staff. The program has served the Arab American community by broadcasting local community events as well as events of national, political, historical, and cultural interest.

Mizna journal continues to be the only journal of Arab American literature in the United States, and is currently in libraries, museums, and on coffee tables throughout the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East. It has been the focus of stories in many media outlets, including the Utne Reader, National Public Radio, the Lebanese Daily Star, Bahrain Today, and Qantara-the publication of the Institut du Monde Arabe. In 2003, we received a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Small Presses for a piece which first appeared in our journal.

In addition to the journal, Mizna presented the annual Arab Film festival in Minnesota (the only such festival in the Upper Midwest), 9 public arts events featuring over 50 emerging writers, musicians, dancers, and visual artists, the first performance of an Arab American play in the Twin Cities with fifteen Arab cast members, and such amazing international talent as Simon Shaheen, Suheir Hammad, Hakim Belabbes, Nadia El Fani, Jack Shaheen, Raed Al Helou, Mai Masri, Iron Sheik, Elias Khoury and others.

AL JADID – a review and record of Arab culture and arts

• “Daring and unafraid of tackling hot and sensitive issues…”
• “…asking questions no one else asks, and printing what others hide.”
• “Critical, truth-telling, truly independent, and free thinking publication at a time when others offers apologia and false praise for all Arab cultural productions.”
• “Predictable only in terms of the broad diversity which you discover in its pages…”
• “…owned by no corporation, and accountable to no one but to its readers…”

In a recent media review article published in the Nation magazine, novelist and former New Yorker magazine correspondent Amy Wilentz wrote, “So I was led reluctantly to the magazine, but when I looked into its back issues, I discovered that it contains a wealth of opinion and information that no one else is publishing in English.” She adds, “Magazines like Al Jadid, which are concerned with niche obsessions or particular groups, also often speak with unintentional authority to the universal, to the general human experience”

The Yaacoubian Building .. ????? ????????
An Egyptian movie directed by Marwan Hamed
Watch it online

The movie presents different characters such as the corrupt minister, the parliament member who’s made his fortune out of drug dealing, the intellectual journalist who is a homosexual, in addition to the community of cheap bars and prostitutes, the leaders of fundamentalists and the armed terrorists.

Once the film was screened it started attracting huge numbers of audiences, due to the bold nature of the issues it tackles, the famous movie stars acting in the film, in addition to the intense publicity it received.  Primary calculations of the movie’s profits in its first two weeks in Egypt only reached nearly LE 8 millions, an unprecedented figure in Egyptian cinema history.

The Visitor
Coming back to a Greenwich Village flat he rarely uses, Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins), is surprised to find a couple living there. Not squatters but unfortunate victims of a rental scam, they turn out to be illegal aliens, a Syrian percussionist named Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and his girlfriend Zainab (Danai Gurira ), a Senegalese who makes and sells handcrafted jewelry. As withdrawn from life as Walter is, he slowly finds himself bonding with the couple and lets them stay..

The Syrian Bride
A humane and empathic work, The Syrian Bride depicts the personal impact of politics upon individuals.

In this moving drama from Israeli filmmaker Eran Riklis, a young Israeli woman, engaged to a Syrian man, faces the fact that marriage to her betrothed in Syria will mean she can never return to… In this moving drama from Israeli filmmaker Eran Riklis, a young Israeli woman, engaged to a Syrian man, faces the fact that marriage to her betrothed in Syria will mean she can never return to Israel. But when she gets to the border and looks set to begin a new life, some surprises await her.

Satin Rouge
Lilia, a gorgeous “woman of a certain age,” has suppressed her own desires all her life. When her daughter falls for a cabaret musician, Lilia goes to the nightclub to confront the man. Once there, however, she finds herself drawn to the shady, tantalizing world of the cabaret, which opens up a whole new universe to her that she is powerless to resist.

Umm Kulthum, A Voice Like Egypt

She had the musicality of Ella Fitzgerald, the public presence of Eleanor Roosevelt, and the audience of Elvis Presley. Her name was Umm Kulthum, and she became a powerful symbol, first of the aspirations of her country, Egypt, and then of the entire Arab world.

Lemon Tree
Salma, a Palestinian widow living in the West Bank, is awakened by the grating sound of sawing emanating from her carefully tended lemon grove. …Planted by her father over fifty years ago, Salma weeps bitter tears when informed that her beloved grove would be decimated because of the threat they pose to her new neighbors. The lemon trees are her only source of income. She is not about to let this happen without a fight and embarks on a battle that would be waged in court with words instead of weapons and bloodshed.

Caramel
In Beirut, five women meet regularly in a beauty salon, a colorful and sensual microcosm of the city where several generations come into contact, talk and confide in each other. Layale loves Rabih, but Rabih is married. Nisrine is Muslim and her forthcoming marriage poses a problem: she is no longer a virgin. Rima is tormented by her attraction to women and especially to this lovely client with long hair. Jamale is refusing to grow old. Rose has sacrificed her life to take care of her elderly sister. In the salon, their intimate and liberated conversations revolve around men, sex and motherhood, between haircuts and sugar waxing with caramel.