August 2006

1. New for World Sales: MIKDAMOT / PPRELIMINARIES by Anat Even
2. LIKE TWENTY IMPOSSIBLES and DIARY OF A MALE WHORE at Locarno Film Festival
3. Amos Gitai's NEWS FROM HOME opens in German theatres September 7th .
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1. New for World Sales: MIKDAMOT / PRELIMINARIES by Anat Even

mec film is proud to announce that it acquired the World Sales rights for Anat Even's award winning 40 minute-documentary MIKDAMOT / PRELIMINARIES. The film won the 2^nd prize at prestigious Nyon International Documentary Film Festival as well as the Best of Shorts at the Israeli Documentary Forum.

SYNOPSIS
The voice of this film is that of the Israeli author S. Yizhar, who reads the first few chapters of his autobiography "Mikdamot" (“Preliminaries” or “Prefaces” in Hebrew). Director Anat Even (“Detained”/"Asurot") accompanies Yizhar’s voice with her gaze, which continues it and stands against it at one and the same time.

S. Yizhar describes a dramatic day in the life of infant Yizhar, (1917) a story that is a dialogue of love and reckoning with his father, with the founding generation, and the Zionist dream. Even, who sees Yizhar as a member of that founding father generation, examines this score-settling up close through purely visual means. The film traverses Israel’s battered landscape, moving along its bypass roads that masquerade as the highway to Zionism, progressing and retreating in time when in fact it is stuck at the very point that Yizhar, the infant/80 year old, marked in “Mikdamot” – when the Zionist dream is simultaneously realized and shattered.

Yizhar Smilansky (b. 1917, known as S. Yizhar), is considered to be the greatest Israeli author of 20th century Hebrew writing; he is a part of the literary-cultural canon in Israel. His work spans over 60 years of writing and uses a unique language to draft the geographical and human landscape of Israel before, during and after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

Anat Even, Israel 2005, 40 min, Video, colour, Hebrew with English, French or German subtitles
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2. LIKE TWENTY IMPOSSIBLES and DIARY OF A MALE WHORE at Locarno Film Festival

Annemarie Jacir's award winning short fiction LIKE TWENTY IMPOSSIBLES (Palestine 2003) and Tawfik Abu Wael's successful short fiction DIARY OF A MALE WHORE are presented at the „Leopards of Tomorrow“ retrospective at the International Film Festival Locarno.
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3. Amos Gitai's NEWS FROM HOME opens in German theatres September 7th

mec film opens last part of Gitai's House-Trilogy NEWS FROM HOME theatrically in the beginning of next months. The film had it's World Premiere at Berlinale International Film Festival, the distribution is supported by Filmstiftung NRW and the European Union in the framework of the Euromed Audiovisual programme.