In her directorial debut, Mary Jirmanus Saba deals with a forgotten revolution, saving from oblivion bloodily suppressed strikes at Lebanese tobacco and chocolate factories. These events from the 1970s, which held the promise of a popular revolution and, with it, of women’s emancipation were erased from collective memory by the country’s civil wars. Rich in archival footage from Lebanon’s militant cinema tradition, the film reconstructs the spirit of that revolt, asking of the past how we might transform the present. FIPRESCI International Critics Prize Winner at the 2017 Berlinale Forum.
– Malgorzata Sadowska

Mary Jirmanus Saba is a geographer who uses film and other media to explore labor movement histories, connections among unstable landscapes and legacies of colonialism in the Arab World, Latin America and Turtle Island and the ever-present resilience of everyday life. Her debut feature film A Feeling Greater Than Love (2017) premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival Forum where it received the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize, making several “Best of 2017” lists. From 2006-2008, she produced the community broadcast television program, Via Comunidad with art collective Vientos del Sur in Ibarra, Ecuador. A avid producer of anonymous and collective agitprop, her latest film Mahdi Amel in Gaza (2024) is screening in community spaces, protest sites, and sometimes festivals. Saba is a member of UAW Labor for Palestine, the People’s CDC and a UC Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Santa Cruz in Film and Digital Media.

Preceded by a workshop: Mon. November 18, 4 – 7 PM, Comm. 139

In this workshop filmmaker and scholar Mary Jirmanus Saba will discuss her recent work on films made in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, exploring the emergence of the “character driven resilience documentary.” Using her own work as an example, Saba will facilitate a discussion about the political economy of arts funding and social movements.

To join the workshop, RSVP to ilusztig@ucsc.edu.

Presented by Film and Digital Media and co-sponsored by the Center for the Middle East and North Africa (CMENA).