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JBA PRODUCTION
In 2008
MILH HADHA AL-BAHR (original title ) / SALT OF THIS SEA (English title)
a feature film by Annemarie Jacir
109mn / 35mm coulor Dolby 1,66
Synopsis
Soraya, 28, born and raised in Brooklyn, decides to return to live in Palestine, the country her family was exiled from in 1948.
On arriving in Ramallah, Soraya tries to recover her grandparent’s money, frozen in an account in Jaffa, but is refused by the bank. She meets Emad, a young Palestinian whose ambition, contrary to hers, is to leave forever.
Tired of the constraints that dictate their lives, Soraya and Emad know in order to be free, they must take things into their own hands, even it means breaking the law. In this quest for life, we follow their trail through remains of a lost Palestine.
Bio/filmo
Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir has been working in independent film since 1994 and has written, directed and produced a number of short films including "A post Oslo history" (1998), "The satellite shooters" (2001) and "Like twenty impossibles" (2003). She works as a freelance editor and cinematographer and also teaches. "Salt of this sea" is her first feature film. Jacir lives in Ramallah and is currently writting a feature, "When I saw you".
Production : JBA Production 52 rue Charlot 75003 Paris (France) • www.jbaproduction.com T : +33 (0)1 48 04 84 60 / F : + 33 (0)1 42 76 09 67
Email : jbaprodfilms@club-internet.fr
Distribution France : Pyramide 5, rue du Chevalier de Saint George 75008 Paris (France)
T : +33 (0)1 42 96 02 20 • F : +33 (0)1 40 20 05 51
Email : distribution@pyramidefilms.com - www.pyramidefilms.com
Ventes internationales : Pyramide International 5, rue du Chevalier de Saint George 75008 Paris (France) •
T : +33 (0)1 42 96 02 20 / F : +33 (0)1 40 20 05 51
Email : yoann@pyramidefilms.com - elagesse@pyramidefilms.com • www.pyramidefilms.com
Attachées de presse France : Laurence Granec et Karine Ménard 5bis rue Kepler 75016 Paris (France) T : +33 (0)1 47 20 36 66 - F: +33 (0)1 47 20 35 44 / Email : lgranec@club-internet.fr
Attaché de presse international: Stephen Lan
Email : lan.stephen@sympatico.ca • www.StephenLan.com
SALAMANDRA (Argentina)
a feature film by Pablo Agüero
In development 2007/2008
THE YOUNG MARX (France)
a feature film by Raoul Peck
shooting November 2008
L’ÉNERGUMÈNE (France)
a feature docudrama by Jean-Loïc Portron
shooting spring 2008
FACE (France-Taïwan)
a feature film by Tsai Ming-Liang
shooting September 2008
JBA ÉDITION
New titles DVD 2007/2008
available at the Agence C3 or ADAV
PEOPLE FROM THE SHANTYTOWNS
a feature documentary by Robert Bozzi
« In 1970, I filmed the Portuguese community of the Saint-Denis shantytown. I saw it in its death throes. However, in the back of a shed, there was a mother and her new born son. Twenty five years later, I wanted to meet again these "people from the shantytowns", in order to know how they had passed through time. »
DVD5 – Pal – Versions : francais
WOMEN OF HIZBOLLAH
a feature documentary by Maher Abi Samra
Maher ABI-SAMRA returns to the quarter of Ramel el Ali, in Beirut’s southern suburb, where he grew up. Settled in the 50s by a mostly Shiite community which came from the villages of southern Lebanon and the Beka Valley, this quarter grew on the rubble of the civil war. By the early 80s, it had become one of the strongholds of the Hizbollah. Two portraits of women, Zeinab and Khadije, activists in the Hizbollah, examine the personal, social and political factors of their commitment.
DVD5 – Pal – Versions : french and english – 52’
THE MEDELLIN NOTEBOOKS
a feature documentary by Catalina Villar
Medellin, too well know as the cartel’s city. An unbelievable level of violence. The suffering of the peasants chased off their lands, eaten away by war, overpopulation, unemployment. The first victims of this violence are the young children and the adolescents. Surviving is managed by trying to cling on to anything offering some semblance of peace: women (from families often reduced to their vestiges), school (bereft of means), the church (omnipresent). In a school run by quite a surprising teacher, adolescents attempt, try to write in their “Notebooks” the stories of their violent lives, to establish something they can depend on for orientation. Millerdad and Sandra, Maria-Eugenia and Doralba, Juan-Carlos and Camilo tell about their mother’s kindness, the absence of fathers, the battle to survive, and above all, childhood and the will to live.
DVD5 – Pal – original version with french or english subtitles – 75’
In preparation
LUMUMBA
a feature film by Raoul Peck
Patrick Lumumba, the hero of Congolese independence, was not yet 30 when the first tremors of botched decolonisation thrust him to the forefront of the international political area. After a course of a few years, Lumumba, became the most reviled man of this intense cold war periode. Becoming Prime Minister of one of the richest countries in Africa, Lumumba’s destiny as tragic hero was charted, his assassination already programmed. He would remain in power only three months. All that remained for his assassins to do was dipose of his body.
DVD9 – Pal – Original version with english or french subtitles – 110’
APRIL CAPTAINS
a feature film by Maria de Medeiros
In Portugal, late in the night of April 24 to 25, 1974, the radio broadcast an outlawed song: "Grândola". It could have just been an act of insubordination by a rebellious journalist. It was in fact the preplanned signal triggering the military coup which was to change the face of this country and the destiny of vast territories in Africa.
DVD5 – Pal – French version and original version with english or french subtitles
ONE EVENING AFTER THE WAR
a feature film by Rithy Panh
August 1992. Savannah, 28 years old, finds himself back in Phnom Penh after four years fighting the Khmer Rouge. Like the rest of his generation, he's known only war since infancy, camps, hunger and massacres. All he's got left now is his uncle, Sôn, as the rest of the family was entirely annihilated by Pol Pot's regime. One evening, at the dance bar where his war buddy Maly is working as b o u n c e r, Savannah falls prey to the charm of the beautiful Srey Poeuv, one of the bar girls, who, from time to time, also serve the desires of the richest patrons. The two young people from a sacrificed generation are soon to be victims to their own passion. Madly in love with Srey Poeuv, Savannah goes back to the ring and kick boxing. He tries to convince the young girl to give up her work as "companion" and to live a "normal life" with him. They make a pact, to try never again to sell their bodies, in any fashion. But it's already too late in their precarious universe, passion dragging along with it the one who wanted to live toward an ineluctable death, while forcing the one who wanted to die to live with the memory of their love.
DVD5 – Pal - original version with french or english subtitles – 109’
HEY COUSIN !
a feature film by Merzak Allouache
The country mouse, Alilo, arrives wide-eyed from Algiers to do a little business. The town mouse, his cousin Mok, French-born and Parisian to the core, is there to meet him. Alilo loses the address of the guy he is supposed to meet and they spend a frantic week trying to track down the suitcase which he absolutely has to take back to Algiers. During this enforced stay, Alilo's constant amazement reflects the stifling strictures of Algerian society, while Mok's endless survival tricks show up the extreme harshness of life in Paris. Alilo finds true love and misses his return flight, little knowing that Mok, his "pure French" cousin, has fallen foul of the law and been deported to Algeria.
DVD5 – Pal – Original version with french or english subtitles – 99’
JUSTICE
a documentary by Olivier Ballande
Antananarivo, capital city of Madagascar. At the rehabilitation Center of Antananarivo, Joseph, 15 years old, has been emprisoned for a year for stealing a watch. He has waited for an hypothetical judgement. For stealing a shawl, Victorien, 17 years old, has cleared a six month penalty at the Antananarivo prison among 4000 adults failing to prove he was minor. Amazed at the startling gap between the punishment and the crime, Olivier Ballande and Alice Mallet decided to follow day after day Joseph and Victorien's steps in the Madagascan judicial system. They testify underdevelopment and the fate reserved to this generation of children.
DVD5 – Pal – Original version with french or english subtitles – 58’
DOUBLE DVD OF RAMADAN SULEMAN
two features films by Ramadan Suleman
Zulu love letter – 100’ :Johannesburg is in a state of euphoria two years after the first democratic elections. Here Thandeka, a young black journalist, lives in fear of her country’s past. She’s so troubled that she can’t work, and her relationship with Mangi, her 13-year-old, profoundly deaf daughter, goes from bad to worse. Then, one day Me’Tau, an elderly woman, arrives at the newspaper. Ten years earlier, Thandeka witnessed the murder of Me’Tau’s daughter, Dineo, by the secret police. Me’Tau wants Thandeka to find the murderers and Dineo’s body so that the girl can be buried in accordance with tradition. Both women are unaware that the killers are lurking nearby. What Me’Tau couldn’t know is that Thandeka has already paid for her knowledge, for having dared stand up to the apartheid system run by the whites. Mangi secretly prepares a Zulu love letter, four embroidered images representing solitude, loss, hope, and love, as a final gesture towards her mother so that she won’t give up the fight.
Fools – 85’ : Charterston Township 1990. Professor Zamani is respected in the township. To be sure, he once raped one of his students but the community turned a blind eye. Zamani used to rail against the apartheid system but those days are long gone. Now he teaches South African history in the Afrikaner language and grudgingly organizes the picnic for National Day, which commemorates the Boers' massacre of the Zulu nation... When Zani, the rape victim's brother returns from Swaziland where he won a place in school, he is determined to change everything. In the small hours, in the waiting room at Johannesburg station, he runs into Prof. Zamani, who's spent the night on the town. They travel back together to the harsh reality of the township. In due course, Zamani regains some of his pride and Zani, inevitably, loses some of his under the gaze of the women, who never renounced their dignity.
DVD9 – Pal – Original version with french and english subtitles
NOTES FROM A KURDISH REBEL
a feature documentary by Stefano Savona
Built around the notes of Akif, a young Kurdish freedom fighter, the film is the chronicle of a group of warriors who cross the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan to reach the combat zones of the Turkish border.
DVD5 – Pal – French version and original version with english or french subtitles – 79’
VOD
All our films on
Arte VOD (http://www.artevod.com) & Universcine(http://www.universcine.fr)
On France Telecom (http://www.orange.fr ) :
April Captain by Maria de Medeiros
For all the films completed see « Films » on the site JBA ÉDITION
In 2008
MILH HADHA AL-BAHR (original title ) / SALT OF THIS SEA (English title)
a feature film by Annemarie Jacir
109mn / 35mm coulor Dolby 1,66
Synopsis
Soraya, 28, born and raised in Brooklyn, decides to return to live in Palestine, the country her family was exiled from in 1948.
On arriving in Ramallah, Soraya tries to recover her grandparent’s money, frozen in an account in Jaffa, but is refused by the bank. She meets Emad, a young Palestinian whose ambition, contrary to hers, is to leave forever.
Tired of the constraints that dictate their lives, Soraya and Emad know in order to be free, they must take things into their own hands, even it means breaking the law. In this quest for life, we follow their trail through remains of a lost Palestine.
Bio/filmo
Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir has been working in independent film since 1994 and has written, directed and produced a number of short films including "A post Oslo history" (1998), "The satellite shooters" (2001) and "Like twenty impossibles" (2003). She works as a freelance editor and cinematographer and also teaches. "Salt of this sea" is her first feature film. Jacir lives in Ramallah and is currently writting a feature, "When I saw you".
Production : JBA Production 52 rue Charlot 75003 Paris (France) • www.jbaproduction.com T : +33 (0)1 48 04 84 60 / F : + 33 (0)1 42 76 09 67
Email : jbaprodfilms@club-internet.fr
Distribution France : Pyramide 5, rue du Chevalier de Saint George 75008 Paris (France)
T : +33 (0)1 42 96 02 20 • F : +33 (0)1 40 20 05 51
Email : distribution@pyramidefilms.com - www.pyramidefilms.com
Ventes internationales : Pyramide International 5, rue du Chevalier de Saint George 75008 Paris (France) •
T : +33 (0)1 42 96 02 20 / F : +33 (0)1 40 20 05 51
Email : yoann@pyramidefilms.com - elagesse@pyramidefilms.com • www.pyramidefilms.com
Attachées de presse France : Laurence Granec et Karine Ménard 5bis rue Kepler 75016 Paris (France) T : +33 (0)1 47 20 36 66 - F: +33 (0)1 47 20 35 44 / Email : lgranec@club-internet.fr
Attaché de presse international: Stephen Lan
Email : lan.stephen@sympatico.ca • www.StephenLan.com
SALAMANDRA (Argentina)
a feature film by Pablo Agüero
In development 2007/2008
THE YOUNG MARX (France)
a feature film by Raoul Peck
shooting November 2008
L’ÉNERGUMÈNE (France)
a feature docudrama by Jean-Loïc Portron
shooting spring 2008
FACE (France-Taïwan)
a feature film by Tsai Ming-Liang
shooting September 2008
JBA ÉDITION
New titles DVD 2007/2008
available at the Agence C3 or ADAV
PEOPLE FROM THE SHANTYTOWNS
a feature documentary by Robert Bozzi
« In 1970, I filmed the Portuguese community of the Saint-Denis shantytown. I saw it in its death throes. However, in the back of a shed, there was a mother and her new born son. Twenty five years later, I wanted to meet again these "people from the shantytowns", in order to know how they had passed through time. »
DVD5 – Pal – Versions : francais
WOMEN OF HIZBOLLAH
a feature documentary by Maher Abi Samra
Maher ABI-SAMRA returns to the quarter of Ramel el Ali, in Beirut’s southern suburb, where he grew up. Settled in the 50s by a mostly Shiite community which came from the villages of southern Lebanon and the Beka Valley, this quarter grew on the rubble of the civil war. By the early 80s, it had become one of the strongholds of the Hizbollah. Two portraits of women, Zeinab and Khadije, activists in the Hizbollah, examine the personal, social and political factors of their commitment.
DVD5 – Pal – Versions : french and english – 52’
THE MEDELLIN NOTEBOOKS
a feature documentary by Catalina Villar
Medellin, too well know as the cartel’s city. An unbelievable level of violence. The suffering of the peasants chased off their lands, eaten away by war, overpopulation, unemployment. The first victims of this violence are the young children and the adolescents. Surviving is managed by trying to cling on to anything offering some semblance of peace: women (from families often reduced to their vestiges), school (bereft of means), the church (omnipresent). In a school run by quite a surprising teacher, adolescents attempt, try to write in their “Notebooks” the stories of their violent lives, to establish something they can depend on for orientation. Millerdad and Sandra, Maria-Eugenia and Doralba, Juan-Carlos and Camilo tell about their mother’s kindness, the absence of fathers, the battle to survive, and above all, childhood and the will to live.
DVD5 – Pal – original version with french or english subtitles – 75’
In preparation
LUMUMBA
a feature film by Raoul Peck
Patrick Lumumba, the hero of Congolese independence, was not yet 30 when the first tremors of botched decolonisation thrust him to the forefront of the international political area. After a course of a few years, Lumumba, became the most reviled man of this intense cold war periode. Becoming Prime Minister of one of the richest countries in Africa, Lumumba’s destiny as tragic hero was charted, his assassination already programmed. He would remain in power only three months. All that remained for his assassins to do was dipose of his body.
DVD9 – Pal – Original version with english or french subtitles – 110’
APRIL CAPTAINS
a feature film by Maria de Medeiros
In Portugal, late in the night of April 24 to 25, 1974, the radio broadcast an outlawed song: "Grândola". It could have just been an act of insubordination by a rebellious journalist. It was in fact the preplanned signal triggering the military coup which was to change the face of this country and the destiny of vast territories in Africa.
DVD5 – Pal – French version and original version with english or french subtitles
ONE EVENING AFTER THE WAR
a feature film by Rithy Panh
August 1992. Savannah, 28 years old, finds himself back in Phnom Penh after four years fighting the Khmer Rouge. Like the rest of his generation, he's known only war since infancy, camps, hunger and massacres. All he's got left now is his uncle, Sôn, as the rest of the family was entirely annihilated by Pol Pot's regime. One evening, at the dance bar where his war buddy Maly is working as b o u n c e r, Savannah falls prey to the charm of the beautiful Srey Poeuv, one of the bar girls, who, from time to time, also serve the desires of the richest patrons. The two young people from a sacrificed generation are soon to be victims to their own passion. Madly in love with Srey Poeuv, Savannah goes back to the ring and kick boxing. He tries to convince the young girl to give up her work as "companion" and to live a "normal life" with him. They make a pact, to try never again to sell their bodies, in any fashion. But it's already too late in their precarious universe, passion dragging along with it the one who wanted to live toward an ineluctable death, while forcing the one who wanted to die to live with the memory of their love.
DVD5 – Pal - original version with french or english subtitles – 109’
HEY COUSIN !
a feature film by Merzak Allouache
The country mouse, Alilo, arrives wide-eyed from Algiers to do a little business. The town mouse, his cousin Mok, French-born and Parisian to the core, is there to meet him. Alilo loses the address of the guy he is supposed to meet and they spend a frantic week trying to track down the suitcase which he absolutely has to take back to Algiers. During this enforced stay, Alilo's constant amazement reflects the stifling strictures of Algerian society, while Mok's endless survival tricks show up the extreme harshness of life in Paris. Alilo finds true love and misses his return flight, little knowing that Mok, his "pure French" cousin, has fallen foul of the law and been deported to Algeria.
DVD5 – Pal – Original version with french or english subtitles – 99’
JUSTICE
a documentary by Olivier Ballande
Antananarivo, capital city of Madagascar. At the rehabilitation Center of Antananarivo, Joseph, 15 years old, has been emprisoned for a year for stealing a watch. He has waited for an hypothetical judgement. For stealing a shawl, Victorien, 17 years old, has cleared a six month penalty at the Antananarivo prison among 4000 adults failing to prove he was minor. Amazed at the startling gap between the punishment and the crime, Olivier Ballande and Alice Mallet decided to follow day after day Joseph and Victorien's steps in the Madagascan judicial system. They testify underdevelopment and the fate reserved to this generation of children.
DVD5 – Pal – Original version with french or english subtitles – 58’
DOUBLE DVD OF RAMADAN SULEMAN
two features films by Ramadan Suleman
Zulu love letter – 100’ :Johannesburg is in a state of euphoria two years after the first democratic elections. Here Thandeka, a young black journalist, lives in fear of her country’s past. She’s so troubled that she can’t work, and her relationship with Mangi, her 13-year-old, profoundly deaf daughter, goes from bad to worse. Then, one day Me’Tau, an elderly woman, arrives at the newspaper. Ten years earlier, Thandeka witnessed the murder of Me’Tau’s daughter, Dineo, by the secret police. Me’Tau wants Thandeka to find the murderers and Dineo’s body so that the girl can be buried in accordance with tradition. Both women are unaware that the killers are lurking nearby. What Me’Tau couldn’t know is that Thandeka has already paid for her knowledge, for having dared stand up to the apartheid system run by the whites. Mangi secretly prepares a Zulu love letter, four embroidered images representing solitude, loss, hope, and love, as a final gesture towards her mother so that she won’t give up the fight.
Fools – 85’ : Charterston Township 1990. Professor Zamani is respected in the township. To be sure, he once raped one of his students but the community turned a blind eye. Zamani used to rail against the apartheid system but those days are long gone. Now he teaches South African history in the Afrikaner language and grudgingly organizes the picnic for National Day, which commemorates the Boers' massacre of the Zulu nation... When Zani, the rape victim's brother returns from Swaziland where he won a place in school, he is determined to change everything. In the small hours, in the waiting room at Johannesburg station, he runs into Prof. Zamani, who's spent the night on the town. They travel back together to the harsh reality of the township. In due course, Zamani regains some of his pride and Zani, inevitably, loses some of his under the gaze of the women, who never renounced their dignity.
DVD9 – Pal – Original version with french and english subtitles
NOTES FROM A KURDISH REBEL
a feature documentary by Stefano Savona
Built around the notes of Akif, a young Kurdish freedom fighter, the film is the chronicle of a group of warriors who cross the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan to reach the combat zones of the Turkish border.
DVD5 – Pal – French version and original version with english or french subtitles – 79’
VOD
All our films on
Arte VOD (http://www.artevod.com) & Universcine(http://www.universcine.fr)
On France Telecom (http://www.orange.fr ) :
April Captain by Maria de Medeiros
For all the films completed see « Films » on the site JBA ÉDITION
contact : jbaprod@jbaproduction.com
jba production • 52, rue Charlot 75003 Paris
t : +33(0)1 48 04 84 60 • f : +33(0)1 42 76 09 67
t : +33(0)1 48 04 84 60 • f : +33(0)1 42 76 09 67
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