New York University will screen “About Baghdad,” an award-winning documentary about the lives of Iraqis in post-Saddam Iraq, on Tues., March 4, 6 p.m. at NYU’s Cantor Film Center. For more information, call 212.998.7380. The film, originally released in 2004, is co-produced and co-directed by Gallatin Professor Sinan Antoon, who left Iraq during Saddam’s rule.
New York University will screen “About Baghdad,” an award-winning documentary about the lives of Iraqis in post-Saddam Iraq, which the New York Times described as “emotionally and intellectually challenging,” on Tues., March 4, 6 p.m. at NYU’s Cantor Film Center (36 E. 8th St. at University Place [Subway Lines: R, W (8th Street); 6 (Astor Place)]). For more information, call 212.998.7380.
The film, originally released in 2004, is co-produced and co-directed by Sinan Antoon, a professor at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, who left Iraq during Saddam’s rule. In July 2003, three months after the invasion of Iraq, Antoon, a writer and poet, returned to his native Baghdad with a team of independent filmmakers to document the effects of decades of oppression, war, sanctions, and occupation.
For more on the film, go to http://www.aboutbaghdad.com/
Reporters interested in attending the screening should contact James Devitt, NYU’s Office of Public Affairs, at 212.998.6808 or james.devitt@nyu.edu
Antoon’s debut novel, I’jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody, was published in English in 2007. The work was originally published in Arabic in 2004, and hailed by the London-based pan-Arab daily al-Hayat as “one of the most important Arabic novels to be published in recent years.” A fictional memoir set in the complex of the General Security headquarters in Baghdad in 1989, the book is a collection of vignettes by a young man in detention that move from his prison existence to adolescent memories of the Iran-Iraq war to frightening hallucinations, resulting in what Poets and Writers magazine described as “a moving portrait of life in Saddam Iraq.” The Los Angeles Times writes that the fictional writer’s “dreams, memories, and fantasies are eerily beautiful.” I`jaam, which includes an introduction by Elias Khoury, a novelist and a Global Distinguished Professor at NYU, was chosen by Kirkus Reviews for its 2007 special issue on Debut Fiction as one of 25 new and promising voices in fiction.