Arab, Middle Eastern, and North African American Heritage Month: Videos and Film

Music is more than just a sequence of sounds reaching our being. It can bring back memories, call up fantasies, dreams, feelings, and emotions. Music can destroy borders and connect us. Palestine has been under occupation since 1948, which impacts lives every day. Freedom is limited, because of restrictions within society and imposed identities by Israel.

Only days after the 2017 Trump inauguration, furious Americans gathered at airports across the country in protest of the Muslim ban. But it was the efforts of the American Civil Liberties Union, waging the fight in federal court, that turned the tide. Access to the ACLU offices has finally been granted to the award-winning filmmaking team, as they follow four seismically important cases and a handful of magnetic attorneys who managed to persuade Supreme Court Justices, beating back serious encroachments upon our freedoms.

It's time to stand up and reject the negative social elements of Arab culture. Maryam Salman, a medical student at RCSI Bahrain, discusses the Middle East's current double standards between men and women. She tackles the invisible societal chains that prevent women from reaching their full potential. This talk was heavily inspired by the book “We Should All Be Feminists” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She quotes, “We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise, you would threaten the man.”

When America and Britain invaded Iraq in 2003, most people expected an easy victory. Two very different witnesses question the benefits of the war in Iraq.

She lived in Cairo, Paris and New York, but died in an old age home in Givatayim. She was admired and beautiful, but only few knew her during her life and even less after she had passed away. She was the first to write of Levantine and Mizrachi identities, as no one before her had done.

(2022) In this three-part travelogue, a young Muslim American couple discover America’s Muslim roots on Route 66. From Chicago to St. Louis to Amarillo Texas, and across the Southwest, rap-star Mona Haydar and husband Sebastian Robins enjoy the iconic highway’s well-known roadside attractions, and along the way discover its overlooked Muslim American story. Mona Haydar and Sebastian Robin drive the first leg of Route 66. Join them as they discover Muslim stories from America’s heartland, a history that dates back to the 1800s. They also experience some early tests to their relationship.

23 year old, Nadia Murad, a once ordinary girl, is a survivor of the 2014 genocide of the Yazidis in Northern Iraq who was able to escape sexual slavery at the hands of ISIS, has become a relentless beacon of hope for her people. On Her Shoulders follows this strong-willed young woman as she fights to bring ISIS to justice and save her people from extinction.

Samaritans are a unique minority in the Middle East. The world’s only holders of Israeli-Palestinian dual nationality, with only 780 members left, they are now on the verge of extinction. In the West Bank, on the heights of Nablus, Abdallah Cohen, the high priest's grandson, seeks his own way.

Tony Tahhan was born in Venezuela to a Middle Eastern family and growing up in Miami, Tony Tahhan draws inspiration from a variety of cultures. In this moving and beautiful talk, he shares how his experiences growing up with Syrian cuisine have informed his understanding of not only that culture — but the others he calls his own — and how we can use food and foodways as a lens to better understand humanity as a whole. Born in Venezuela to a Middle Eastern family and growing up in Miami, Tony Tahhan draws inspiration from a variety of cultures.

(2018) After three years of war, Yemen is facing its most serious humanitarian crisis since the end of the Second World War. ‘Yemen, the chaos in silence' is an unprecedented journey which tells the story of a conflict taking place virtually without exterior witnesses. From Aden in the south to Sanaa in the north, via Taez, the frontline, this film explores a devastated country eroded by political and religious divisions and ravaged by cholera.