叙利亚影史上最著名也是最具争议性的一部纪录片，由毫不妥协的叙利亚导演Omar Amiralay拍摄，也是他的代表作。影片被禁至今，奥马尔流亡海外直到30年后才得以回国拍摄他的第二部作品。本片获1976年柏林国际影展新电影论坛Otto Dibelius奖。 The first documentary to present an unabashed critique of the impact of the Syrian government's agricultural and land reforms, Everyday Life in a Syrian Village delivers a powerful jab at the state's conceit of redressing social and economic inequities. Interviews with farmers, health workers and a police officer contrast the peasants' regard for the state with the mindset of state representatives toward those peasants. Sa'adallah Wannus, a prominent Syrian playwright and essayist collaborated with documentary pioneer Amiralay on the project. The film remains banned in Syria. The original print has been restored and digitized very recently, and subtitled in English especially for this program. Director Omar Amiralay was born in Damascus in 1944 to the son of a high-ranking officer in the Ottoman military and a Lebanese mother, Omar Amiralay headed to Paris in 1965 to pursue studies in drama and theater at the Théatre des Nations. Gradually he began to lean towards cinema and enrolled at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinematographiques, or IDHEC in 1967. He was deeply suspicious of fiction cinema, and after a year at the institute began to question whether film was really his vocation. When the 1968 student revolt erupted, Amiralay joined the hordes of protestors, and began to film. His fate was sealed; he never returned to the IDHEC and instead began to make documentary films. He returned to Damascus eager to instigate a new documentary cinema. His best-known documentary film, conceived with Sa'adallah Wannus, one of Syria's most celebrated modernist playwrights and essayists, was radically different. Titled al-Hayat al-Yaomiyyah fi Qarya Suriyya it was a scathing critique of the government's failure to provide basic amenities to the poor. The film, produced by the General Organization for Cinema, was banned and remains so to this day. From very early on, Amiralay's films earned a number of awards worldwide, beginning with Leipzig for Film-Essay on the Euphrates Dam. His cinema has become canon for generations of documentary filmmakers in the Arab world. The most recent edition of the Cinema du Reel festival at Paris' Centre Pompidou dedicated an hommage to his work in March 2006.
