20 April 2019
Cinema Yateem” 120 Kg” Screens “16 Acres”
Cinema Yateem” initiative continued its movie screenings titled “120 kg” in the courtyard of the building opposite the orphanage in Manama (next to Yateem Centre - Manama), on Saturday, 20 April 2019, presenting this time, the film "16 Acres”, a ddocumentary film directed by Richard Hanki, shedding lights on the rebuilding of Ground Zero, which is the most architecturally, politically, and emotionally complex construction project in recent American history. The event is a collaboration between the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities and Mawane, coordinated with Yateem Family, which aims to revive the concept of open air cinemas in the spaces of Manama, screening a series of films related to architecture, humanity and identity.
When we stand in downtown Manhattan in the future and look up and ask, "Why?"-Why is it so strange, so rude, so striving, so right, so wrong?-we will have Sixteen Acres to give us the answers. Tracing the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site from graveyard to playground for high design, insurgent critic Philip Nobel strips away the hyperbole to reveal the secret life of the century's most charged building project.
Providing a tally of deceptions and betrayals, a look at the meaning of events beyond the pieties of the moment, and a running bestiary of the main players-developers and bureaucrats, star architects and amateur fantasists, politicians and the well-spun press-Nobel's book bares the crucial moments as factions and institutions converge to create a noisy new culture at Ground Zero, and the building of “ Islamic Center” instead.
Richard Hankin portrays the Tragic and comic by turns, full of low dealings and high dud-geon, Sixteen Acres takes us behind the scenes at a site in search of its sanctity, exposing the reconstruction as the flawed product of a complicated city: driven by money, hamstrung by politics, burdened by the wounds it is somehow supposed to heal. The struggle to develop these 16 acres of 'sacred' land has encompassed 12 years, 19 government agencies, and over $20 billion. Aside from the engineering challenges, various constituencies - politicians, developers, architects, insurers, local residents, and relatives of 9/11 victims - profess conflicting claims to the site. 16 Acres is the inside story of how and why this historic project got built. At the heart of the story is the dramatic tension between noblest intentions, the desire of everyone involved to "get it right," and the politics, hubris, ego and ideology that is the bedrock of New York City.
Worth to mention that this cooperation between “ Mawane” and BACA is part of “Manama Call”, launched by Bahrain Culture Authority in January last year, which aims to enhance the development of the City of Manama and nominate its urban history on UNESCO World Heritage List, as a creative city, shedding lights on Manama city’s universal exceptional heritage, as reflected by its historical buildings and their identity that should be preserved due to their irreplaceable architectural heritage value. This endeavor requires the support, participation and the cooperation of several families from Manama to guarantee the sustainability of this unique architectural heritage, bringing life again to the spirit and memory of the place.
The title of "120 KG" was selected for the current film season at the Yatim Cinema, referring to the period in which British Airways Overseas was awarded in 1945 to BAPCO a certificate to import 120 kg of films by air freight per week from Karachi, Shipments of films, which contributed to the development of cinema in the Kingdom of Bahrain. By 1945, that the British Overseas Airways Corporation granted BAPCO a priority certificate to import, by air freight, 120 kilograms of film a week from Karachi, thereby removing the inconvenience of shipping delays. In a relatively short space of time, a modest proposal for a couple of cinemas in Bahrain had developed into a profitable business. Air Freight to Serve Bahrain’s First Cinemas started to flourish amid 1930s at Manama open-air in order to spread awareness about the cinema’s role in bridging the gap between Bahrain and other cultures and civilizations.
