DOX BOX Global Day 2012: A Flood in Baath Country et Step by Step

13 March 2012

RIDM and Cinema Politica, in collaboration with the Syrian film festival DOX BOX and RIDM, will present A Flood in Baath Country and Step by step this Friday, March 16.

DOX BOX is a documentary film festival based in Damascus, Syria. Its fifth edition, scheduled this month, will not take place. This evening tribute to Syrian documentary films, a year after the beginning of the revolution, will be held at Concordia University (room H-110).

In 1970, director Omar Amiralay showed his enthusiasm for President Hafez Al-Assad's efforts to modernize Syria by dedicating his first documentary to the construction of the impressive new Euphrates Dam. The dam, and others like it, was to be the pride of the Baath Party.

The collapse of the Zayzun Dam thirty years later, which killed dozens of people and ruined thousands of lives, and the revelation of an official report that had predicted the dam's fate, inspired Amiralay to make A Flood In Baath Country, which examines the flood's devastating impact on a Syrian village. With its powerful and daring critique of Syria's political regime and the tribal politics that hold it together, the film foreshadows the wave of democracy currently sweeping the Arab world, with citizens finally rising up to demand a fundamental change in their countries' leadership.

A FLOOD IN BA'ATH COUNTRY Syria. 2003. 
Directed by Omar Amiralay. Colour. 46 min.  
(In Arabic with English subtitles) 
Friday, March 16, 2012 ?7 p.m. 
Room H-110, Concordia University  
1455 de Maisonneuve West
Suggested donation $2-5

The film will be preceded by Step by Step (Oussama Mohammad/ Syria/ 1978/ 22 min). By filming the daily efforts of village people and the very basic education system, the film portrays young villagers whose choice is either their parents' hard farming life or that of a migrant laborer in the city. Trapped between religious and political ideologies and completely fascinated by authority, these young peasants choose the army.

More information: cinemapolitica.org/concordia