Beirut DC, a film co-operative founded in 1999, seeks to make independent Arab author cinema more widely known, among other things via "Ayyam Beirut", the Arab Film Festival that recently celebrated its fifth anniversary. Mona Sarkis talked to Eliane Raheb
With its labyrinthine alleyways, the Casbah of Algiers has often been the site of bloody battles. Now the Algerian government wants to develop the symbolically important quarter into a tourist attraction. Cornelia Derichsweiler reports
The Iranian revolution sought to establish an Islamic state. Officially, it got one. Unofficially, however, the process did not lead to the Islamicization of society, but to a transformation of Islam. This, in any case, is the theory held by the Iranian sociologist Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi. Mona Sarkis spoke to him
An exhibition in the Parisian Institut du Monde Arabe is dedicated to the life and work of renowned Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum, whose repertoire is still popular with stars such as Franco-Moroccan Sapho and up-and-coming singers such as Lebanese Nancy Agram. Mona Sarkis reports
It is now plain for all to see that the destruction of Syria's cultural heritage is far worse than anyone expected. Michel al-Maqdissi, director of the Archaeological Excavations Department at the Syrian Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums from 2000 to 2012, tells Mona Sarkis how dire things really are and of the mistakes made by UNESCO