ICFCC Issue 01

First Act
The first act presents snippets of overheard taxi conversations in cities from Beirut to Casablanca ; the musical phenomenon known as CHEB, whose naked verses echo from the tiles of a music-filled hammam ; the grand question : what does it mean to be Arab ?; and couscous…in its myriad varieties.

Second Act
In the second act, we chat with Jordanian architect Deema Assaf, who fights climate change by planting forests ; and then we dive into the universe of Moroccan skateboarders, with help from the lens of Yassine Sellame.

Third Act
For the third act, we spend a lovely sensory interlude with Carl Gerges, the Lebanese architect and musician ; swirl through the souks of Marrakesh and the Gueliz neighborhood with Eliot Leblanc-Hartmann as he photographs fashion troublemaker Artsi Ifrach with his ever-ready film camera ; and share quotations and passages from the work of Tunisian writer Yamen Manai.

Fourth Act
For the fourth act, Kamal Hachkar and Philippe Bellaïche, two activist film directors, converse about documentaries, their first time meeting up, and Moroccan Jewish identities.

Fifth Act
The Fifth Act delivers us to the home of Fatima Al-Banawi--Saudi director, actress and woman--where the ode to love is universal ; then resurrects forgotten memories of Paris’s Latin Quarter in the 1950s, when the alleys, cafes and cabarets on the doorstep of the Sorbonne resounded with the modern music of North Africa.