Lintizae Alkahraman / The Dislocation of Amber (2025 restoration Cimatheque)

 

Hussein Shariffe: / إنتزاع الكهرمان / Lintizae Alkahraman / The Dislocation of Amber (SD 1975).

/ إنتزاع الكهرمان /

    SD (Sudan) 1975. The Department of Culture presents. Sponsored by: The Sudanese National Council for the Arts and Sudan Film Unit.

    D+SC+AD+cost: Hussein Shariffe. DP: Abdel Moneim Adawi; ass: Salah Awad Hussein. Voice and song: Abdel Aziz Mohammed Dawood. Graphics: Osman Abdalla Waqialla & Les Henson. ED: Alan Ballard. C: Ilham Yousif, Fayza Amaseeb, Khadiga Faysal, Sondr Hale, Fathi Berkia, Guereth Ciepluch, Ahmed Tahir, Sami El Sawi, Mohammed Bushara, Darsalam Dusoogi, Anna Ciepluch, Osman Samkari, Yousif Aydabi, James Fox.

    Loc: the island of Suakin, Eastern Sudan.

    32 min

    In Arabic.

    Restored in 2025 by Cimatheque – Alternative Film Centre from a 16 mm positive print provided by Cinémathèque suisse.

    Copy from: Cinémathèque suisse.

    Subtitles in English and Italian (n.c.).

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2026: Cinemalibero.

    Introduced by Aboubakar Sanogo (FEPACI) and Eiman Hussein [f].

    Viewed at Cinema Jolly, 22 June 2026.

Eimar Hussein (Bologna 2026): "The Dislocation of Amber is a haunting meditation on memory, absence, and what remains of history through the ruined port city of Suakin. Once a thriving crossroads on the Red Sea, the city appears in Hussein Shariffe’s film as a ghostly space of coral walls, deserted alleyways, shells, scorpions, and passing camel caravans. Moving between documentary observation and visual poetry, Shariffe listens to the silence of a place whose glory has faded without entirely disappearing. The voice and singing of Abdel Aziz Dawoud lend the film its deep elegiac rhythm, turning the city into both witness and metaphor: a site where beauty survives in fragments, and where the marks of time, colonial violence, and abandonment become integral to Shariffe’s enduring cinematic language. Presented in its new digital restoration, Shariffe’s vision returns as a necessary homecoming after half a century: luminous, fractured and profoundly alive." Eiman Hussein

Canyon Cinema: "A surrealist portrait of the old coral city of Suakin, a site of enslavement and colonial port throughout Ottoman and early British imperial rule, now in ruins. 'Only faint traces of its ancient affluence are apparent today... a dimmed reflection in a cracked mirror, empty eyes with the stars in a different house, laughter in another room' (Hussein Shariffe, 1974). The Dislocation of Amber is an homage to a place made by water and consumed by it, as the surrounding Red Sea slowly erodes what is left of the city. It features poems by the late Sudanese singer Abdel-Aziz Dawoud".

AA: Hussein Shariffe's The Dislocation of Amber is a majestic, poetic, oceanic vision of the Sudanese port city of Suakin.

It is visionary cinema. Its imagist power, glowing colour and luminous tableau aesthetics evoke Paradjanov. The elegiac current reminds me of Sokurov.

Gorgeous moving aerial shots, perhaps from a helicopter, give a general overview. Views of ancient ruins and broken statues revive centuries of historical memory. As do enchanting pages of old Arabic books. The compositions are electrifying, the camera angles imaginative from high angle shots to beach level views towards the Red Sea.

A high angle shot of a circle dance (see image above) proceeds to a rapidly rotating high angle camera movement. The enchanging song and voiceover is by Abdel Aziz Dawoud, whose lyrics I hope will be translated one day.

In a daring composition a naked young woman on the beach "parts the Red Sea" with her legs, between which we see a sailboat rapidly approaching. The scene ends with the powerful surge of waves against the beach.

Montages of colonialist oppression remind us of a history of violence and slavery during the years of Ottoman and British rule.

The wind blows over it and it is gone.

Peacock's feathers, silhouettes of dromedaries at sunset, festive pageants and the gaze of an owl connect us to times beyond memory.

A man runs towards the sunset. Men are grouped by the sea behind an Ottoman flag (red flag with a star and a crescent Moon) in silent resolve.

A beautiful and welcome restoration of a masterpiece which has been around in prints fading to red.