Al-leil / The Night

Mohammad Malas: ( الليل ) / Al-leil / The Night (SR 1992).

Mohammad Malas: ( الليل ) / Al-leil / The Night (SR 1992).

( الليل ) / Al-lail [IMDb] / A Noite / La Nuit / Die Nacht.

    SR 1992. Prod.: National Film Organization.

    Director: Mohammad Malas / Mohamed Malas [IMDb] / Mohamad Malas [MecFilm]. Scen.: Mohammad Malas, Ossama Mohammed. F.: Youssef Ben Youssef. M.: Kais Al-Zubeidi. Mus.: Vahe Demergian. Int.: Sabah Jazairy (Allah), Fares al-Helou (il ragazzo), Rafik Sbei’I, Riad Chahrour (madre di Wissal), Omar Malas (il figlio), Maher Sleibi (moglie di Awad), Hazar Awad, Raja Kotrach (Awad), Abdullah Dawle. 115’. Col.

    Language: Arabic

    Not released in Finland.

    35 mm print with English subtitles n.c. from: Trigon Film

    In collaboration with CNC – Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2024: Cinemalibero

    Viewed at Arlecchino Cinema with e-subtitles in Italian n.c., 30 June 2024

Rasha Salti quoted in the Bologna 2024 Catalogue: "Evocations of the tragedy of Palestine permeate the basic storylines to build dramatic resonance, but also to defy and subvert its appropriation in the discourse of the regime. In Malas’ al-Leil, the main character is a man trying to recover the lost memory/biography of his father, a peasant who had voluntarily joined the ranks of rebels – as did hundreds of peasants in the region – in the 1936 Great Revolt in Palestine." 

"As the young man endures humiliation in his own life, his troubles echo the hardships that his father endured after he settled in Quneitra. The film does not aim at restoring heroism to forgotten heroes, far from it: with humility and eloquence, it gives the tragedy of Palestine and its struggle for liberation the face of a peasant, the figure of a man, his wife and his son. The loss of his memory/biography is an erasure from the script of official history – self-congratulating and triumphalist. " Rasha Salti, Insights into Syrian Cinema, Rattapallax Press/Arte East, New York 2006

Mohammad Malas quoted in the Bologna 2024 Catalogue: " My cinematic generation didn’t just come up with a topic or address an issue, but I can safely state that we managed to establish our own language. And this wasn’t a traditional language. […]"

"With al-Leil I had an opportunity to lay the foundation for a structure that was entirely mine. I dedicated 20 years of my life to talking about this ancestral home of mine, Quneitra, with all its nightmares and dreams, with every vision that I developed into film, and carried from one film to another, with the purpose of composing a visual, sentimental and personal work."

"This is, as Tarkovsky calls it, a carving of history. This is a search for time from a personal perspective, not just a historical perspective. To me, the time of that vague love for the ancestral home, towards the mother and the lost father, and to the political era, which is also lost, or Quneitra in al-Leil – all of this is an attempt to express that pain, that loss, which pierces your connection to reality with the peculiar flavours of alienation and longing. " Mohammad Malas, The Cinema of Muhammad Malas, in Vision of a Syrian Auteur, edited by Samirah Alkassim, Nezar Andary, Palgrave MacMillan, London 2018

AA: Mohammad Malas's The Night / al-Leil is a burning elegy related to the tragedy of Quneitra, razed by Israel to the ground in the Six Day War in 1967 in the campaign on the Golan Heights then in Syria. 

The city remains in ruins as a memorial. A city turned atrocity. "There is no there there". 

Malas's film is an act of will and a memory organization to invoke the spirit of his father, a freedom fighter who gave his life for his people.

The Night is not story-driven. It does not pursue a coherent narrative.

The past has been destroyed. Memory is broken. It is impossible to shape the big picture from the fragments. Key points of reference before the Six Day War include the Arab Revolt against the British Mandatory Palestine in 1936 and the 1948 Arab war against the United Nations Partition Plan to establish two states in Palestine. 

Family history is intimately linked with the political: weddings, births of children (Malas was born in 1945). Israeli occupation violence is covered with unflinching fury.

The film, however, is not filled with hate. It is not a testimony of brutalization. It is a work of visual poetry of the highest order.

The night. The Moon. The fireworks.

Montages of close-ups. Unveiling the statue.

In the beginning there was silence. A lamb to the slaughter.

The smile vanished from my mother's face.

Is this the image of my father?

The wind. The air.

The wall breaks down.

The leaves of a book turn in the wind.

The door opens.

The Night is a movie of images, moods, visions and tableaux.

It is like spellbound in a fairy-tale.

Magic and reality.

The cinematography by Youssef Ben Youssef is luminous.

The mise-en-scène of Mohammad Malas has a gorgeous composition in depth.

The definition of light and colour is ravishing.

A feast of colour.

A feast of light.

A feast of composition.

The 35 mm colour print from Trigon Film is brilliant.

...

In the Six Day War in 1967 Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq, supported by Lebanon, tried to destroy Israel. Instead, Israel destroyed the Egyptian air force and fended off the overwhelmingly superior opponent. Palestinians remained victims of brutal geopolitics, their hurt and injustice unconciliated and unhealed.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: DATA FROM IMDb, WIKIPEDIA, MECFILM AND FESTIVAL CINÉ-PALESTINE:

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: DATA FROM IMDb, WIKIPEDIA, MECFILM AND FESTIVAL CINÉ-PALESTINE:

IMDb: "The Night is set in the village of Quneytra, which borders on the Golan, a key battlefield in the 1967 war between Syria and Israel. We are led to the grave of the filmmakers' father, an old Syrian fighter who joined the volunteer armies in Palestine in the Great Revolt of 1936. Trying to exorcise feelings of shame and humiliation that have long accompanied the image of his father and the village occupied by Israelis during the war of 1967, Malas tries to restore his father's history and give him a more honorable death. But tracing the outline of a memory tortured by burning questions finds only bitter answers." (IMDb)

FROM WIKIPEDIA: MOHAMMAD MALAS

"Between 1980–81 Malas shot a documentary film, al-Manam (Arabic: المنام, lit. 'The Dream'), about the Palestinians living in the refugee camps in Lebanon during the civil war. The film was composed of interviews with the refugees in which he asked them about their dreams. Filming took place between the Sabra, Shatila, Bourj el-Barajneh, Ain al-Hilweh and Rashidieh refugee camps. During filming Malas lived in the camps and conducted interviews with more than 400 people. However, the Sabra and Shatila massacre of 1982, which claimed the lives of several people he interviewed, shocked Malas and he stopped working on the project. He finally returned to it after five years, and the film was released in 1987. Al-Manam won first prize at the 1987 Cannes International Audio Visual Festival (FIPA) but was not widely distributed."

"Malas directed his first feature film, Ahlam al-Madina (Arabic: أحلام المدينة, lit. 'Dreams of the City'), in 1983. The autobiographical coming-of-age film set in Damascus in the 1950s was co-written with Samir Zikra and received first prize at the Valencia and Carthage film festivals. In 1990 Malas shot Nur wa Zilal ("Chiaroscuro"), a documentary film about Nazih Shahbandar whom he described as "Syria's first filmmaker." The film was banned by Syrian authorities and was only allowed to be screened once in 1993 at the American Cultural Center in Damascus."

"Malas's second feature film, al-Lail (Arabic: الليل, lit. 'The Night'), was realized in 1992. The autobiographical film was set in Quneitra in the years between 1936 and the Arab–Israeli War of 1948. It forms, along with Ahlam al-Madina, the first and second parts of an unfinished trilogy project of Malas's. Al-Lail received international recognition and won first prize at the 1992 Carthage Film Festival. However, the film was banned in Syria and was only screened for the first time in 1996. Malas also collaborated with Omar Amiralay on the 1996 documentary film, Moudaress, about the Syrian pioneer painter Fateh Moudarres. Bab al-Makam (Arabic: باب المقام, lit. 'Passion'), released in 2005, was Malas's third feature film."

FROM WIKIPEDIA: QUNEITRA

"Quneitra (also Al Qunaytirah, Qunaitira, or Kuneitra; Arabic: ٱلْقُنَيْطِرَة or ٱلْقُنَيطْرَة, al-Qunayṭrah or al-Qunayṭirah pronounced [æl qʊˈneɪ̯tˁ(ɨ)rɑ]) is the largely destroyed and abandoned capital of the Quneitra Governorate in south-western Syria. It is situated in a high valley in the Golan Heights at 1,010 metres (3,313 feet) above sea level. Since 1974, pursuant to United Nations Security Council Resolution 350 and the Agreement on Disengagement between Israel and Syria, the city is inside the UN-patrolled buffer zone."

"Quneitra was founded in the Ottoman era as a way station on the caravan route to Damascus and subsequently became a garrison town of some 20,000 people. In 1946, it became part of the independent Syrian Republic within the Riff Dimashq Governorate and in 1964 became the capital of the split Quneitra Governorate. On 10 June 1967, the last day of the Six-Day War, Quneitra came under Israeli control. It was briefly recaptured by Syria during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, but Israel regained control in its subsequent counter-offensive. The city was almost completely destroyed by Israel before it withdrew in June 1974. Syria later refused to rebuild the city and actively discouraged resettlement in the area. Israel was heavily criticized by the United Nations for the city's destruction, while Israel has also criticized Syria for not rebuilding Quneitra."

"In 2004, its population was estimated at 153 persons, with some 4,000 more living in the surrounding areas of the former city."

"During the Syrian Civil War, Quneitra became a clash point between rebel forces and Syrian Arab Army. Between 2014 and July 2018, Quneitra was de facto controlled by the Southern Front, a Syrian rebel alliance. By the end of July 2018, Syrian Government forces regained control over the city."

...

MECFILM

The Night (al-Leil)

a film by Mohamad Malas

Content

In the destroyed city of Quneitra is the grave of a resistance fighter for Palestine. His son, the director, tries to restore the dead man’s history by mixing echoes of his mother’s memory and his desire to give his father a more honorable death. Through the daily lives, dreams, fears and hopes of its citizens, Malas chronicles his hometown Quneitra in the Golan Heights between 1936, the year of the first revolts against the British and Zionists in Palestine until the year of the city’s destruction. He seeks to exorcise a feeling of shame and humiliation that long accompanied the image of his father and also his town, occupied by Israelis in 1967.

...

FESTIVAL CINÉ-PALESTINE

The Night

Syria | 1992 | 115 min | Documentary

In a ruined Quneitra, lays the grave of a soldier fallen for Palestine. His son tries to piece together the story of this man through his mother’s memories. He also plunges deeper into the violent and agitated political past of his country, Syria from the 1930’s until 1967.

The Night is a moving tribute to this fallen father and soldier, to whom Mohamed Malas gives back his dignity. It is a powerful and poetic film in which the fate of people is taken away by the flow of history. Yet, this isn’t a historical film which dissects facts and reality.

A film by Mohamed Malas