Considered the first feature film directed by a Gulf national, Khaled Al-Sidik’s visually detailed The Cruel Sea (Bas ya Bahar, 1972), set in Kuwait, is a gripping portrait of the lives of pearl divers and their families set in a pre-petroleum Gulf. It won the FIPRESCI award at the Venice Film Festival in its debut and has played in festivals around the world ever since. Traditional villages and an absence of modern twentieth-century technology capture a scarcely documented past, portraying complicated characters living on the edge of death every day. The film stars Kuwaiti acting legends Saad Al Faraj and Hayat Al Fahed.
The screening will be followed by Q&A with Alia Yunis and film director Khaled Al Sidik.
[Director: Khaled Al Sidik | Kuwait | 1971 | 100 mins | Arabic w/ English Subtitles]
The screening is in conjunction with the Film and Visual Media in the Gulf: Images, Infrastructures, and Institutions a conference convened by Alia Yunis and Dale Hudson October 28th–30th, 2018, at the NYUAD Institute.
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