UALR’s Middle Eastern Studies Program presents its first Festival of Arab and Middle Eastern Cinema Thursday, Feb. 1, featuring a lecture on Arab cinema and screening of two films.

The events, which are free and open to the public, begin at noon in Donaghey Student Center Meeting Room C with lunch for participants followed by the lecture by Professor Joel Gordon of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.

At 2 p.m., the festival will screen Sleepless Nights (Sahar al-Layali), Egypt’s entry for the 2004 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and the country’s greatest box-office hit in a decade. Sleepless Nights has been a runaway hit with Egyptian audiences and critics alike. Starring a Who’s Who of Egyptian cinema’s younger generation, the film explores four young, well-to-do couples and their marital problems, including adultery and sexual frustration. The film’s candid portrayal of sexual relations and its rare criticism of the institution of marriage created a stir throughout the Middle East.

At 6:30 p.m., the festival presents the Turkish film Valley of the Wolves (Kurtlar Vadisi Irak), a popular 2006 film based on a television series of the same name that has been a hit in Turkey for three seasons. The movie is set in northern Iraq during the occupation of Iraq and begins with U.S. forces capturing 11 Turkish special forces soldiers.

For more information, call Jacek Lubecki, UALR coordinator of International and Middle Eastern Studies, (501) 683-7029 or email jxlubecki@ualr.edu.