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Addar Cultural & Conference Center
Located in the heart of the old city of Bethlehem and the up-to-date facilities, ad-Dar Cultural and Conference Centeris a unique place for local, national and international concerts, theatre, film...more..
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Welcome to the AET Book Club web site. Browse through our extensive selection of books, videos, CD-ROMs, and greeting cards for that special gift for someone you know—or for...more..
AL-KASABA Theatre and Cinematheque
AL-KASABA Theatre and Cinematheque in Ramallah is a non-governmental cultural specialized organization established in 1970. It aims at the activation of cultural life in Palestine, and enhancing the cultural exchange...more..
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Based in San Diego, California, Alternate Focus is a television broadcast group promoting an alternative view of Middle East issues. We are a membership organization, working on a non-profit basis...more..
Dreams of a Nation
Dreams of a Nation is a Columbia University-based project to provide resources for research into Palestinian film- and video-making. This website makes available information on the history of Palestinian filmmaking...more..
Electronic Intifada - Films
Despite censorship in both Israel and the U.S., Palestinian film is becoming increasingly visible on the international film scene. Here are EI''s film reviews, film news, film distributors, news on...more..
Free Palestine Campaign
The Free Palestine Campaign website first went up in May, 2001, to help publicize the work of the International Solidarity Movement, and to recruit people for the first campaign in...more..
Free Speech TV On the Web
Resources on Palestine FSTV''s library of recent films, interviews, websites and articles...more..
Justice For James Miller
James Miller, a film director and cameraman, was killed in the Rafah Area of the Gaza Strip on 2nd May 2003 while filming a documentary, almost certainly by Israeli soldiers...more..
Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre Foundation
The Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre Foundation is a non- governmental, non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of arts and culture in Palestine. The Sakakini Centre was founded in 1996, and...more..
Palestinian filmmakers
Listing of many Palestinian filmmakers, including photos and short biographies...more..
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Youth a-LIVE: Empowering Youth Through Media -- With the screening of 5 documentary films made by 20 youngsters from Bethlehem District, the International Center of Bethlehem celebrated the ending of an...more..
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| Scene from
Paradise Now, nominated for an Oscar and winner of the 2006 Golden Globe
award for Best Foreign Language Film (Paradise Now/Warner Brothers) |
Interview
with Hany Abu Assad, "Paradise Now"
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, October 2005
On Friday, October 28, the new Palestinian drama “Paradise
Now” will open in New York City and will then be released in select cities.
This film was directed by Palestinian filmmaker Hany Abu Assad, who is known for
his previous international award winning films “Rana’s Wedding”
and “Ford Transit.”
In “Paradise Now,” Abu-Assad takes a more daring
step in the history of Palestinian cinematography. The story of the film takes
us inside the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, and follows two Palestinian young
men as they prepare to carry out an attack inside Israel. The film was entirely
filmed in the Palestinian territories and Israel.
The film has already caught the attention of many International
Film Festivals such as the New York, Toronto, Berlin, and the Telluride 2005 Film
Festivals and has already won the Blue Angel Award 2005 for Best European Film
and the Amnesty International Award 2005. Palestine will be submitting the movie
to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as its official entry for best
foreign language film. The film will be distributed in the United States by Warner
Brothers Studios....On October 19, ADC attended a private advance screening of
the film. The following is ADC’s interview with director Hany Abu Assad
about his movie.
You are an engineer by training, how did you become
an international award winning filmmaker?
Just by luck I have become an international award winning filmmaker.
I studied airplane engineering in Holland and I worked as process engineer for
2 years.
Did you anticipate that a major U.S. Studio, Warner
Brothers, would pick up the movie? Did you anticipate receiving any awards for
this film?
No, I was very surprised. But now looking back, it is not a
surprise because in the United States there are enough people who are open minded
and are curious like me.
Explain what, if any, obstacles you faced when making
and financing the film.
I do not know about obstacles in financing the film but
I know that we went through hell in order to make the shooting of the film possible.
Shooting a film in occupied territories is not an easy thing. more..
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| Hebron
settler with Israeli soldiers (Reuters) |
Israel's
Walter Cronkite Finds Himself at a Crossroads
By Gal Beckerman, Forward, December 23, 2005
...This summer, in a five-part series called "Land of the
Settlers," that was shown on Israeli television, Chaim Yavin [returned from
the West Bank and Gaza with] two testimonial threads: on the one hand, the humiliation
and despair of Palestinians under occupation, and on the other hand, Jewish settlers
who come off, in the words of Ha'aretz's Tom Segev, as "members of a fanatic,
insane, racist, despicable, violent and dangerous sect — more infuriating
and despairing than they have ever been seen in an Israeli film."....The
first two parts of "Land of the Settlers" have now been translated into
English and are making the rounds of American synagogues, giving some American
audiences a chance to see the affecting documentary.
But the strongest presence in the film — more than
the Palestinians on line at the checkpoints or the settlers shooting machine guns
at Arab farmers — is Yavin's own voiceover, sincerely shocked, saddened
and stupefied by what appears on the other end of his camera. There is not much
new information here in this documentary, not for those of us who have been intellectually
honest in exploring all the thorniness of the conflict. What is new is Yavin,
like Columbus discovering his own backyard, suddenly coming to terms with all
the moral and practical implications of the occupation as if he had never thought
of them before, as if he hadn't been delivering the news every night for 40 years.
The beauty is that he makes it new for us, as well
The first two parts of "Land of the Settlers"
have now been translated into English and are making the rounds of American synagogues,
giving some American audiences a chance to see the affecting documentary. In one
scene, Yavin sits drinking tea in a settler bungalow. He engages the settlers
in argument, screaming at them like a teenager would at an old conservative uncle
at a family gathering, and eventually explodes against their stubbornness: "I
am coming now from the roadblock. I am coming from a woman who had to give birth
at a roadblock because they didn't let her go through, and I say to you, 'This
isn't Jewish, what we're doing here.'"
more..
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VIDEO -
Survivor: Arabs capable of perpetrating worse Holocaust
YNetNews 4/30/2008
ynet video
- Holocaust survivor recounts Jewish life in Greece under Nazi occupation and later in Auschwitz. ’If the Germans, who are supposedly cultured, did what they did to the Jews, then imagine what other nations are capable of doing,’ he says (04. 30. 08) Video: Infolive. tvAuthor: Infolive. tv [end]
Chicago Palestine Film Festival opens 25 April
Announcement, Chicago Palestine Film Festival, Electronic Intifada 4/17/2008
The Chicago Palestine Film Festival committee is very excited to announce the selections and schedule for our seventh annual film festival. Our 14 selections this year come from Palestinian, American, European and other filmmakers. The festival will take place between 25 April and 8 May at the Siskel Film Center.
Our opening night film is SlingShot Hip Hop, a documentary about Palestinian hip-hop and youth culture. Jackie Reem Salloum spotlights a vibrant hip-hop scene where artists discover the form and employ it to express themselves and their perspectives on occupation, dispossession and poverty. The film follows several different artists, including DAM, a group of Palestinian artists and activists from Israel who have seen commercial success in Europe, PR (Palestinian Rapperz), who have developed their hip-hop art forms in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip, and soloist Abeer and the more.. e-mail
London Palestine Film Festival opens 18 April
Announcement, London Palestine Film Festival, Electronic Intifada 4/14/2008
The London Palestine Film Festival opens on 18 April and runs for two weeks at the Barbican Cinema (18-24 April) and SOAS, Russell Square (25 April 25th - 1 May), with another extraordinary selection of documentary, fiction, art, and experimental work by artists from around the world. Still the largest of its kind, this year the Festival program includes more than 50 works related to the question of Palestine by artists from across the globe working in every genre of film and video production.
As the Festival falls on the 60th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948, several special sessions have been programmed to address questions of oral history and memory in cinema, as well as of refugee rights and the ongoing struggles of Israel’s Palestinian population. These include the opening session, featuring a short (45 minute) screening of oral history documentation projects from Israel and Lebanon, followed by a panel discussion on methods, challenges, and goals of oral history video work on the Palestinian Nakba. more.. e-mail
Israel Through Its Own Eyes
Al Jazeera 4/3/2008
In Israel Through Its Own Eyes Al Jazeera takes a frank look at Israel through the work of Israeli filmmakers who are able to offer us a glimpse into a world which would otherwise be unknown to those outside the country. The film One Shot by Nurit Kedar is a troubling look into the work and the minds of an elite team of Israeli army snipers who carry out assassinations. After five weeks of training an Israeli soldier can become a sniper if he chooses. The filmmaker spent a whole year getting all the necessary permits from the Israeli military authorities. This is the first time Israeli snipers were given permission to be interviewed for a film and Israeli military censors required the filmmaker to cover the faces of the soldiers who speak. By the director Lina Chaplin, Yoel, Israel and the Pashkavils takes us into the heart of a tiny self-made Jewish ghetto in Jerusalem. more.. e-mail
Ultra-Orthodox passengers riot aboard El Al plane over screening of film
Zohar Blumenkrantz, Ha’aretz 4/7/2008
Ultra-Orthodox passengers on an El Al flight to Kiev caused a serious commotion Sunday morning after, according to their testimony, a movie was screened on board the plane. The Haredi men, en route to Uman, Ukraine to visit the gravesite of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, said that the airline had promised not to show a film during the flight. When the screens began to unfold in preparation for the screening, the ultra-Orthodox men began going wild. "It was a pretty frightening sight," a passenger on the plane described the events. According to witnesses, the men began shouting and physically trying to prevent the movie screens from unfolding. This is not the first time that El Al is faced with problems with ultra-Orthodox people on board flights to religious sites. more.. e-mail
T.A. film festival tackles Israel’s hardest issues from war to polygamy
Reuters, Ha’aretz 4/4/2008
From one soldier’s account of the Lebanon war to the tale of an Israeli African prince, a Tel Aviv film festival is looking beyond political conflict to examine broader issues of strife and identity in Israel. "People associate Israel with hardcore news, with fighting and conflict," said Ilana Tzur, the event’s director. "But it’s important to see there’s such a wide range of other facets to life. " The films at Tel Aviv’s 10th international documentary film festival, which opens on Thursday, tackle meaty political themes such as Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians and its 2006 war against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon. But they also examine private and cultural struggle in a young country, Israel turns 60 next month, where a Russian Holocaust survivor and an Ethiopian Jew, or an ultra-Orthodox family and a secular singleton might live as neighbors. more.. e-mail
Levy’s choice
Meron Rapoport, Ha’aretz 4/3/2008
Two weeks after the start of the Second Lebanon War, Yariv Mozer, 30, owner of a production company in civilian life and a munitions officer in the reserves, received a telephone call from the commander of his artillery battalion. Mozer’s battalion was part of Central Command and so was not called up, but his commander had a request. The munitions officer in a reserve battalion in Northern Command had gone into shock after a barrage of Hezbollah rockets landed on his unit. Perhaps Mozer could come to replace him? Mozer agreed, without a call-up notice - basically, as a volunteer. He packed his things and headed north. At the last minute, he also took his video camera. And thus was born the film "My First War" ("Hamilhama Harishona Sheli" - produced and edited by Yael Perlov, with support from Noga Communications, the Rabinowitz Foundation and Arte/ZDF), which will be screened next week at the DocAviv Festival. more.. e-mail
Two Schools in Nablus
Al Jazeera 4/1/2008
Filmmakers: Tom Evans and George Azar - Teachers working for months without pay, a chronic overcrowding in the classrooms, and students at risk each day from imprisonment and perhaps worse - welcome to the typical education experience in a Palestinian school. Witness presents a series of three films taking a close look at the extraordinary difficulties and challenges that two ordinary Palestinian schools face. While poverty is widespread throughout the West Bank and Gaza, Nablus is one of the worst-hit areas because of the decreasing range of employers and the limited number of opportunities. Hobbled by the Palestinians’ diminishing purchasing power and by Israeli security closures that have isolated Nablus and its merchants from the rest of the West Bank, hundreds of employees have been fired this year alone. more.. e-mail
Weighing their words with care
Ruta Kupfer, Ha’aretz 3/27/2008
It’s not by chance that at the bilingual school in Jerusalem, where a conversation took place on Wednesday between film actress Debra Winger, who is on a visit to Israel, and writer and journalist Sayed Kashua, language is of central importance. The actress seems to be weighing her words, as if she’s hearing them for the first time, absorbing her own words as if she is her own listener. Every word, however routine, suddenly acquires symbolic import, every metaphor a literal quality. A case in point: She wonders, perfectly naturally, whether Kashua has continued on his path. She uses the term "soldiering on" but then, abruptly, is uncertain whether the martial term is appropriate. She then talks about her visit to the Jerusalem International Film Festival two years ago, where she first met and befriended Kashua - "and then the war broke out," she says, adding quickly, "if you can put it that way. " more.. e-mail
’My identity is the cinema’
Nirit Anderman, Ha’aretz 3/27/2008
Hiam Abbass wrecked Eran Riklis’ plans. One day during the shooting of his new film "Lemon Tree," the director related that after making "The Syrian Bride" four years ago, he intended to avoid politics and deal with a lighter subject. However, his desire to collaborate with Abbass again - in addition to his discovery of a story about a Palestinian woman who set out to defend her orchard - changed the course of events. In "Lemon Tree," which opened in theaters yesterday, Abbass plays a strong woman who rejects the conventions of the conservative society in which she lives. This was also the case in several other films, including "The Syrian Bride," in which she played Amal, the sister of the Druze bride who is not satisfied with her marriage, and dreams of higher education and independence, and in "Red Satin" (2002). more.. e-mail
Actor quits Natalie Portman film due to rabbis’ objections
The Associated Press, Ha’aretz 3/15/2008
NEW YORK - An aspiring actor has quit a movie starring Natalie Portman because it outraged his ultra-Orthodox Jewish religious community, the actor said. "Rabbis didn’t like the idea of a Hasidic guy playing in Hollywood," said Abe Karpen, a Brooklyn cabinet salesman cast as Portman’s husband in the upcoming "New York I Love You. "The project, a collection of 12 short love stories, has been shooting in New York. Karpen, 25, told the Daily News a rabbi raised objections after he filmed a scene with Portman on Wednesday. "This is when I woke up and saw that I made a big mistake," said Karpen, a father of three. "My community, where I live, means everything to me. "Hasidism, a form of mystical ultra-Orthodox Judaism, traces its roots to 18th-century Eastern Europe. more..
N.Y. Plaza Hotel, co-owned by Israeli and Saudi groups, reopens doors
Reuters, Ha’aretz 3/2/2008
Two years after shutting its gilded doors for a $400 million renovation, Manhattan’s famed Plaza Hotel on Saturday began welcoming back guests. "The Plaza is back," Shane Krige, the hotel’s general manager, said as he cut a giant red ribbon that spanned the entrance near the southeast corner of Central Park. "The legend is definitely going to continue." The hotel, co-owned by Israel’s Elad Group and the Saudi-based Kingdom Holding Co. and managed by Fairmont Hotels and Resorts, will have a formal reopening on May 10. The hotel’s grandeur and attentive service inspired writers ranging from Kay Thompson, author of the "Eloise" stories, to Neil Simon, who wrote Broadway play and hit film "Plaza Suite." While hotel guests began checking into the 282 guest rooms, most of which were booked for opening night, much of the storied hotel has been converted to luxury condominiums. more..
A tour of dreams and reality
Daphna Berman, Ha’aretz 2/28/2008
A new documentary film that follows American Jewish tourists in Israel and explores their complex and sometimes strained relationship with the Jewish State debuts tonight at the Jerusalem cinematheque." Eyes Wide Open," a 60-minute look at the story behind the tour buses that often clog the streets of the capital, interviews first-timers as well as more seasoned tourists. What emerges is a story about the inspiration, as well as some of the emotional challenges, that Israel poses to American Jewry.... The documentary followed the tourists - including birthright groups, synagogue missions, an ultra-Orthodox rabbi from Brooklyn, and a volunteer who spent his time here rebuilding Palestinian homes - between December 2005 and December 2006, a period that included the Second Lebanon War. more..
News in Brief:’Jenin, Jenin’screens in Tel Aviv
Ha’aretz 2/26/2008
TA Cinematheque to screen ’Jenin, Jenin’ as gesture of support for director Bakri The Tel Aviv Cinematheque will screen Mohammed Bakri’s controversial film "Jenin, Jenin" tonight, on the eve of the director’s libel trial. Cinematheque director Alon Garbuz said the screening was "a show of support" for Bakri, who has been invited to attend the event. The film was banned by the Israeli Film Ratings Board in 2002, on the premise that it was libelous and might offend the public. This decision was later overturned by the Supreme Court, which nonetheless labeled it a "propagandistic lie." The film describes events in Jenin during the Israel Defense Forces Operation Defensive Shield. After the Supreme Court’s ruling, Bakri and Israel’s cinematheques were sued in a civil law suit by five IDF reservists. The cinematheques reached a compromise with the plaintiffs, while Bakri is scheduled to appear in court tomorrow. more..
Toronto Palestine Film Festival seeking entries
Announcement, Toronto Palestine Film Festival, Electronic Intifada 2/21/2008
The Toronto Palestine Film Festival (TPFF) is now accepting entries for the first annual festival to be held in October 2008.
Conceived by Palestine House, the festival is an important component of the year-long activities commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Nakba. Cinema represents a powerful means for visually interpreting the collective identity and historic struggle of the Palestinian people. The festival will present in film the extraordinary narrative of a dispossessed people living in exile or under Israeli occupation and will introduce Canadian audiences to the rich variety of Palestinian cinema.
While highlighting the work of Palestinian filmmakers the festival will showcase the diverse and creative work of all filmmakers (any nationality) exploring both historic and contemporary themes related to Palestinian culture, experience, and narrative. more..
Ma’an producing new docudrama
Ma’an News Agency 2/13/2008
Bethlehem – Ma’an – Ma’an network has begun filming a new television docudrama entitled Kafa (Enough) which reflects on the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in June 2007 and the negative repercussions of these events within Palestinian society, namely, in the West Bank. The screenplay was written by the Palestinian writer Saleem Dabour, and the film consists of 33 scenes about a Palestinian family living in one of the cities of the West Bank. The younger members of the family are, like many other Palestinian families, affiliated to different factions including Hamas and Fatah. The film attempts to show how the events in the Gaza Strip influenced the individual behavior of average Palestinians at home and in the streets. Creative production crew The film is directed by Yousif Ad-Deik who is aiming the production at a highly-educated audience. more..
Sound and effects courtesy of the IDF
Nirit Anderman, Ha’aretz 2/13/2008
While in Israel people are waiting impatiently to see whether "Beaufort" will be the first Israeli film to win an Oscar, and after the local film industry experienced particularly impressive momentum at the important international festivals, there are signs of awakening among our neighbors to the east and the north. The film industries of Jordan and Lebanon have recently produced interesting films, and there is increasing curiosity worldwide about films originating in the Middle East. This year, 983 films were submitted to the Sundance Film Festival Independent Feature Film Competition, which took place last month in Utah. Sixteen of them ended up being chosen to participate in the competition, and of those, three came from the Middle East. The triple summit in Utah included the Jordanian film "Captain Abu Raed," directed by Amin Matalqa, the Israeli "Strangers" (Zarim), directed by... more..
New film ’Lemon Tree’ offers fresh look at Mideast conflict
Reuters, Ha’aretz 2/9/2008
Boiling the complexities of the Middle East down into a 106-minute film about a Palestinian woman’s lemon trees and tensions arising when Israel’s defense minister moves next door risk over-simplifying the issues. But Israeli director Eran Riklis has delivered a stirring fictional story, "Lemon Tree," that is in many ways a microcosm of the struggles between Israelis and Palestinians - a dispute about land, security, fears and displacement. "It’s a film about people who are trapped in a political situation," said Riklis after the contemporary film, based loosely on true stories with a cast of Israeli and Palestinians, made its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival on Friday. "It’s a film for all audiences." A Palestinian woman has long been peacefully tending the lemon tree grove she inherited from her father on the Green Line that separates Israel and the occupied West Bank. more..
Reflections on the top of the bottom - and a city at the end of its rope
Jim Quilty, Daily Star 2/5/2008
Interview ROTTERDAM: Mahmoud al-Massad doesn’t seem ecstatic. This might seem odd for a man whose film "Recycle" just took the prize for best cinematography in the World Cinema Documentary section at Sundance, America’s best-loved festival of independent cinema. The Palestinian-Jordanian filmmaker is now back home in Holland, where his film just screened for the International Film Festival of Rotterdam, Europe’s most prestigious festival of independent film. "I’m a little tired," Massad smiles over a cup of weak cappuccino. "First there was the premiere at Dubai [International Film Festival] in December, then Sundance and now Rotterdam. I need to work now, to earn some money. "When you finish a film, you think, ’Finally, I’m done. ’ Then you must promote it. You get invited to Sundance and think, ’I’m at the top..." more..
Entries sought for 2008 Boston Palestine Film Festival
Announcement, Boston Palestine Film Festival, Electronic Intifada 1/10/2008
The Boston Palestine Film Festival (BPFF) is now accepting entries for its second annual festival to be held in October 2008.
BPFF seeks to present the extraordinary narrative of a dispossessed people living in exile or under Israeli occupation. Palestinian cinema represents a powerful means for visually interpreting the collective identity, historic struggle and emotional expression of Palestinians today.
The festival will showcase the diverse and creative work of all filmmakers (any nationality) exploring both historic and contemporary themes related to Palestinian culture, experience, and narrative.
BPFF accepts films, videos and digital media in the following categories:Feature Films Documentaries Shorts (including animated or experimental works) Youth work (created by filmmakers under the age of 18)
This year the festival particularly encourages submissions related to the Palestinian refugee issue and themes of exile, to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the Nakba in 2008. more..
Israelis more present in U.S. reality programs
Haaretz Staff and Channel 10, Ha’aretz 12/23/2007
Haaretz. com/Channel 10 daily feature for December 23, 2007.
With the rising presence of Israeli actors, writers and producers in Hollywood, few genres are left in which Israelis have not made their mark. Now, Sabras such as world-famous psychic Uri Geller are attempting to claim their territory in American reality television. Related articles: Haaretz. com TV: Israeli TV programs, formats increasingly sold abroad Survival of the fittest - reality show, that is Uri Geller calling all teaspoon-benders for reality TV show For more video news and features, visit Haaretz. com TV [end]
Neorealist aesthetics meets war in ’Under the Bombs’
Jim Quilty, Daily Star 12/17/2007
Review DUBAI: In bygone days, folks made a distinction between documentaries and fictional films. Self-evident differences between "fact" and "fiction," budgets and screening venues (television sets versus cinemas) were reflected in separate aesthetics - talking heads and voiceovers on one hand, more artful visuals and narrative compositions on the other. Then these distinctions - perhaps more ideal than real to begin with - began to break down. Just as New Journalism (Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, Hunter S. Thompson et al) adopted fiction-writing techniques to fact-based reporting, documentarians became increasingly concerned with discreet compositions and narrative conceits to add nuance to their work. Advances in film and video technology have expedited the process, as have shifting tastes, in which art-house cinemas (and sometimes even commercial megaplexes) now screen more and more feature-length documentaries. more..
Lebanese war film takes excellence award at Dubai film festival
Reuters, Ha’aretz 12/16/2007
The Lebanese movie "Under the Bombs," about interfaith love during the 2006 war in Lebanon, was named best film in Dubai’s awards for Arab cinema, in a year when films about conflict abounded. Lebanon’s Nada Abou Farhat also won the best actress award on Saturday for her role as Zeina, a Shi’ite Muslim divorcee who heads to southern Lebanon in the midst of the fighting to search for her son and falls in love with a Christian taxi driver. "I felt the hatred building inside of me and I wanted to get it out... I wanted to make something against hate," Lebanese director Philippe Aractingi told the audience on picking up his Muhr Award, shaped like a horse’s head. Both Aractingi and Abou Farhat dedicated their awards to those who died in the month-long war between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas that displaced hundreds of thousands of Lebanese and saw many of their homes destroyed. more..
Colleagues support Sapir College lecturer who threw student in IDF uniform out of his class
Tamara Traubmann, Ha’aretz 12/5/2007
Filmmaker Nizar Hassan, who was suspended recently from lecturing at Sapir College near Sderot, pending a disciplinary hearing, after he ordered a student to leave the classroom for wearing an Israeli army uniform and carrying a weapon, received a show of support yesterday from his colleagues and censure from Knesset members. Nearly 40 Jewish and Arab lecturers at Sapir signed a letter to the college’s president and disciplinary committee stating that Hassan "is a talented and courageous artist whose only sin was his attempt to maintain universal civic values, and whose action pointed to the serious phenomenon of the great involvement of the army in campus life." Hassan’s disciplinary hearing is scheduled for Thursday. The Knesset Education Committee discussed his case yesterday, at the behest of MK Zevulun Orlev (National Religious Party) and others, and decided to condemn Hassan "harshly. more..
Arab directors cheered at San Sebastian Film Festival
Middle East Online 9/26/2007
SAN SEBASTIAN, Spain - Arab directors took the lion’s share of the plaudits Tuesday at the San Sebastian Film Festival with Palestinian effort "Salt of this sea" by Anne-Marie Jacir and "Recycle" by Jordan’s Mahmoud Al Massad sharing the Cinema in Movement award. "I am very honoured to have received this award," said Al Massad. The pair will as a result receive help in putting the final post-production touches to their works. For "Salt of this sea" that will consist of help at the Moroccan Cinematographic Centre, as well as 15,000 euros (21,150 US dollars) of aid while "Recycle" will receive a similar sum and be entitled to post-production work at the National Centre of French Cinematography. The Cinema in Movement award was open to works from Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Syria,... more..
Palestinian bomber unlikely star of Israeli film
Reuters, Ha’aretz 9/13/2007
A Palestinian suicide bomber is the unlikely star of a new Israeli film billed by its director as an effort to destroy prejudices that fuel conflict in the Middle East. Scheduled to be screened in early 2008, the film stands to make cinematic history in Israel, where movie-makers tend to shy away from treating the controversy of Israeli-Palestinian violence. Its makers say that by humanizing the bomber - named Tarek and portrayed as coming from the West Bank town of Tulkarm - they hope to show Israelis the complex motives behind many such attacks in the Jewish state." Behind the belts and the suicide bombers and the victims, there are real people, with feelings, motives and fears," Israeli director Dror Zehavi said during a recent filming session in Tel Aviv. more..
Palestinian-born rapper Belly interviewed
Interviewed by Mamoon Alabbasi, Middle East Online 9/1/2007
I have a lot of different messages in my music, but peace is probably my most prominent message, says Belly. -
With three successful mixtapes under his belt and after almost a decade as a hip hop producer and songwriter, Ottawa rapper Belly’s double-disc debut ‘The Revolution’ premiered at number one on the rap charts in Canada in June of 2007. In the same month, the Palestinian-born Canadian rapper took home a MuchMusic Video Award (MMVA) for Best Rap Video for ‘Pressure’ featuring Ginuwine. When did you first start rapping and how did the idea start?
It just came out of me at a young age; probably about ten, or eleven years old. The first album I ever owned was Snoop Doggy Dogg’s and I was obsessed with that album. After that, I started rapping. more..
Ne a Beyrouth wraps up year of cinematic feats
Jim Quilty, Daily Star 9/3/2007
BEIRUT: Ne a Beyrouth’s Festival of Lebanese Film came to a resounding conclusion on Thursday evening with the Beirut premiere of Danielle Arbid’s "Un Homme Perdu (A Lost Man)." Beirut cineastes have reason to be pleased with the quality of many of the works screened. The festival was not without its shortcomings. For many who attended religiously and were impressed by the quality of many programs, the final full day was a disappointment. Though there were some interesting individual films - some of them had been shown in Beirut before - the poor quality of many others detracted from the whole and made the last day feel like filler. Still, several films screened during the course of the week stood out for applause. Among the wide range of animated films, Ghassan Halwani’s 15-minute "Jibraltar," Elie Dagher’s... more..
Palestinian film ’The Last Call’ nominated for short film festival
Ma’an News Agency 8/27/2007
Khan Younis – Ma’an – A Palestinian film called ’The Last Call’ was nominated to compete at the international festival of short films in Italy. Fifty-two films were nominated from 2,000 applications. The eleven-minute film is about four Palestinians who receive a telephone call from the Israeli intelligence, ordering them to evacuate their home as it is to be bombarded by the Israeli forces within minutes. The film shows Palestinian citizens successfully encounter the Israeli policy of house demolitions and shows the psychological influence of Israeli conduct on Palestinians. [end]
Channel 1 won’t finance Gitai’s new film due to his left-wing politics
Assaf Carmel, Ha’aretz 8/26/2007
The Israel Broadcasting Authority’s Channel 1 television committee on Thursday rejected a proposal seeking to help finance a new film by Israeli director Amos Gitai, citing the filmmaker’s left-wing politics and the fact that he lives outside Israel as reasons. IBA Director General Mordechai Shklar proposed participating in the financing of the controversial director’s new film, as well as purchasing for the authority nine of his films for broadcasting on Israeli television. The rejected proposal would have cost at least $200,000. Gitai’s new film "Hitnatkut" (disengagement) is almost complete, and deals with Israel’s unilateral pullout from the Gaza Strip in 2005. The film is scheduled to premier next month at the Toronto film festival. more..
Old stories maybe, but told with a fresh eye
Jim Quilty, Daily Star 8/23/2007
Preview - Ne a Beyrouth’s Festival of Lebanese Film resurrects itself after a year’s postponement - BEIRUT: The delightful heat and humidity weighing upon coastal Lebanon these days make it feel far from autumnal. Nevertheless, Beirut’s fall film festival season is set to commence on Friday evening, with the opening of the sixth edition of Ne a Beyrouth’s Festival of Lebanese Film. The sixth edition was meant to run in 2006 but, like so many of the country’s cultural events, it became a casualty of last summer’s 34-day Israeli assault on the country. During its six-day program, the festival will screen 66 films that were made either by Lebanese filmmakers (expatriate or otherwise) or by foreigners about Lebanon, all in the period from September 2005 to July 2007. The selection includes a range of short, medium- and feature-length films, a selection of animated shorts, a clutch of documentaries of various lengths and a 26-film bushel of experimental works. more..
Evacuees compare pullout to Holocaust
Efrat Weiss, YNetNews 7/26/2007
(Video) Movie produced to mark two years since Gush Katif disengagement features evacuees comparing evacuation to Nazis’ actions during World War II. ’Comparison constitutes cynical abuse of Shoah,’ Yad Vashem says - VIDEO - In a special movie produced to mark two years since the disengagement from Gush Katif, two evacuees compare the pullout to the Holocaust. The film, Never Again, will be screened at the Nitzan caravan community Thursday evening. In the movie, which was produced by SOS Israel, an evacuee from Neve Dkalin, Yehuda Gross says, "In the Holocaust too, people did everything according to law. The law stated that Jews should wear a yellow patch, the law stipulated that their property should be taken away, everything according to law. more..
A few cinematic facts on the ground about Palestine
Jim Quilty, Daily Star 7/26/2007
Hamid Dabashi’s "Dreams of a Nation" is vital, if uneven, reading for students of the region’s cinema - Review - BEIRUT: Palestine’s cinematic landscape is arguably the most intriguing in the Arab Middle East. Palestine is an emblem of injustice that is itself compelling for how it has been ignored and instrumentalized, represented and misrepresented since the creation of the state of Israel. Equally compelling are the several factors that make the political economy of film production in the Middle East(thus Palestine) so dysfunctional. Palestinian cinema is uniquely "exilic" because so many Palestinians live abroad or are internally displaced, and because those who remain or return face multiple travel restrictions within different parts of Palestine and throughout Israel. more..
Beyond mass media: A look at Lebanon’s summer war through the eyes of ordinary citizens
Alex Selim, Daily Star 7/19/2007
Project empowers members of hardest-hit communities to express their own stories and opinions about conflict through photographs and videos - BEIRUT: Last summer’s war with Israel drew the world’s attention, once again, to Lebanon in a state of siege. During the 34 days of bombardment, most of the stories and images about the war came filtered through the mainstream media. Some journalists and photographers for both domestic and international press outlets reported their stories with a tinge of their own or their employer’s political bias. Lost in such coverage was the perspective of private citizens who lived through the upheaval. Lens on Lebanon, an international grassroots documentary project that was formed during the war, is actively trying to correct that perceived mainstream media bias by empowering Lebanese... more..
A Lebanese film on fear and Christian migration to Mars
Daily Star staff, Daily Star 7/18/2007
BEIRUT: "Cinema has always been a dream. Some dreams are broken. Others persevere," muses Philippe Skaff. "You can’t survive making art alone, so I’ve spent a good deal of the last 20 years trying to build a place where art is possible." Renowned in Beit Mery as the chief executive and creative officer of the public relations and advertising firm Grey Worldwide Middle East and North Africa, Skaff shot "Lesson Number Five," his first non-ad-oriented film, in 2006. He wrote and directed the 20-minute short, which stars Antoine Kerbaje, May Hariri and Mario Bassil. Last month the film walked away from the Tangiers Festival of Mediterranean Short Film with the Festival Grand Prize. Depicted by Skaff as a sociopolitical satire, "Lesson Number Five" looks in on a peculiar regimen of English lessons an unnamed "Teacher"... more..
Where we begin: Poetry forged from conflict
Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, Daily Star 7/16/2007
New collection of poems puts an aesthetically pleasing face on an intrinsically vile experience - BEIRUT: Given the explosion of the Beirut-based blogosphere that occurred last summer, when scores of online diaries appeared immediately after Israel’s bombardment and blockade began, it was only a matter of time before publishing houses harnessed the pain, anxiety and rage of those visceral electronic missives into books about the 34-day war. A year on, the amount of cultural product made in response to the war in Lebanon in the summer of 2006 continues to accrue. Technology has largely determined the pace of media used - first came the blogs, then the videos, then the more material artworks in photographs, sculptures, installations and paintings. more..
Fear and fragile peace: a long-suffering people prepare for a new war
Suzanne Goldenberg in Bint Jbeil, Lebanon, The Guardian 7/12/2007
In the video diary that Ali Dagher intended as his last testament of the 34-day war between Israel and Hizbullah, there is a scene where he produces two cupped handfuls of metal bomb fragments that landed in his kitchen. "I collected these here in the house," he tells the camera. "I am not telling anyone about them because I don’t want them to be afraid." The time-date stamp at the bottom of the screen reads July 28 2006, a day of intense battle in this former fortress of Hizbullah. The man staring into the camera is hollow-cheeked and exhausted. But a year later, the chance to look back is intoxicating. Mr Dagher has watched this video diary 10 times since the war - each time a celebration of the fact that he is still alive. "When I was filming this tape, I had no hope of surviving. more..
Gaza voices: ’Trapped in a prison’
BBC Online 6/29/2007
Two weeks after Hamas seized control of Gaza, Palestinians reflect on life in the Gaza Strip.
Life is paralysed. We do have internal security and we do have food, but life is about more than that. What about our hopes and dreams? Our future? You know Maslow’s pyramid of needs? We’re still in the first stage. Yesterday there was an annual conference for us university students who have returned from scholarships abroad. It was held in Ramallah and the Israelis denied those of us in Gaza permission to travel there. So half of us couldn’t make it. We had to do a video conference instead. We were supposed to discuss the same agenda, but now we have totally different concerns. The West Bankers seem more hopeful; in Gaza we’re just thinking about today. more..
Using the raw material of occupation and fragmentation to make art
Jim Quilty, Daily Star 6/28/2007
GRIMSTAD, Norway: The summer of 2006 was an unusually difficult one for Lebanese, thanks to Israel’s month-long spree of aerial and sea bombardment. For Palestinians, the 2006 season was simply the latest in an interminable history of bad summers. In Palestine, as in Lebanon, a few imaginative artists and some funding (usually European) can make interesting film and video out of such circumstances. A case in point is "Palestine, Summer 2006," a DVD released last summer that assembles 13 shorts, all conforming to the collection’s title. "$75,000 was made available from Akka Films - $12,000 in cash, the rest in kind and technical assistance," recalls Rowan al-Faqih. "The original idea was to shoot a Palestinian feature made up of multiple short films of three-minutes each, each referring back to and building on the previous films. more..
Tricking her audience into feeling compassion
Jim Quilty, Daily Star 6/23/2007
InterVIEW - Palestinian video artist Larissa Sansour discusses her work - GRIMSTAD, Norway: One crisp day in Bethlehem, a family gathers on the terrace of their house for meal of mloukhieh. Named after the green plant that is its main ingredient (apparently called "Jews’ mallow" in America), it’s served as soup, usually with meat, rice, lemon juice and sometimes fried or toasted bread. Variations on a theme of mloukhieh are consumed all over the Levant and Egypt but, as Larissa Sansour suggests in her nine-minute video "Mloukhieh (Soup over Bethlehem)," 2006, this dish is one component of a multi-faceted Palestinian identity that has been fragmented but not destroyed by Israeli occupation. As the meal proceeds, a hand-held camera captures the action in black-and-white - the only colors are the yellow of the... more..
In the land of radical Islam
Yoav Friedman, YNetNews 6/5/2007
Film about Jewish community in Iran reveals what life is like for Jews in an Islamist country and under Ahmadinejad’s rule. Movie’s director tells Ynet about process of producing film while adhering to government restrictions, and of what he learned about the Jewish minority in his country What is life like for the Jews living in Iran today? What kinds of social issues concern them and how do they preserve their religious customs in the Islamic state? Thousands of miles from Israel, a small Jewish community lives in Iran, under the rule of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who constantly threatens to "wipe Israel off the map." Iranian director Ramin Farahani has been given a permit from the regime to document the life of the Jewish community in the country, and his film, "Iran’s Jewry "“ Past and Present"... more..
Film festival leaves Sderot, but can’t escape rockets
Mijal Grinberg, Ha’aretz 6/2/2007
"A person can’t dream of reinforced concrete. The moment that happens, he no longer exists," says Yulia Michin Ginzburg, 36, as she smokes a cigarette outside her house on Kibbutz Nir Am. With this statement - a reference to the problem of securing housing in communities near Gaza - Yulia tries to sum up her worldview, which comes across in a documentary made about her, "Chicken and Egg." Seated next to Yulia are the film’s director, Alon Alsheikh, 30, and cinematographer, Eran Yehezkel, 32. The film will be shown this week at the sixth annual Film South Festival, which opened last night in Netivot after being moved from Sderot for the first time because of the security situation. Yulia, a single mother originally from Moscow, raises her daughter at Nir Am under ceaseless Qassam rocket fire. more..
Panning the camera lens over what had been a nonspace before the summer war
Jim Quilty, Daily Star 6/2/2007
’Collecting Dahiyeh’ begins to screen films of the suburbs at Umam D&R -- Preview -- BEIRUT: One of the ramifications of Israel’s 34-day bombing campaign against Lebanon last summer is a sudden awareness of Beirut’s southern suburbs, Dahiyeh. Since Lebanon’s southern neighbor and sometimes-occupier spent so much energy trying to flatten Dahiyeh, particularly the quarter of Haret Hreik, and as television news deigned to turn its came-ras toward it for the better part of a month, artists and audiences have grown interested in what the area was before it was attacked. At once part of Beirut and apart from it, Dahiyeh is not unlike the unregulated "bidonvilles" that have grown up adjacent cities for as long as historians have bothered to notice them and stamp them with various labels. more..
Oscar winning actress Helen Mirren lined up to star in Gaza drama
Haaretz Staff and Reuters, Ha’aretz 5/31/2007
Oscar-winner Helen Mirren is being lined up to star in a film set in the Gaza Strip, as a woman whose journalist daughter falls in love with a Palestinian and is killed, the company making the film said Thursday. The film, described by Left Bank Picture head Andy Harries as more human interest than political, is expected to be shot in Jordan because the fighting between rival factions in Gaza. "It is a very early development and Helen’s name is attached to it," a spokesman for the film company said. "But there is no contract and only a very early script." "But it is safe to say that if it does go ahead - and there is no reason to assume it won’t - then Helen will be involved." The film is to be directed by Philip Martin and written by Frank Deasy, who worked with Mirren on the British television series "Prime Suspect. more..
Israeli duo wins prestigious Cannes prize for best debut film
Nirit Anderman and Uri Klein, Ha’aretz 5/27/2007
Israeli fiction writers Shira Geffen and Etgar Keret’s first film, "Meduzot" ("Jellyfish"), won the Camera d’Or Prize, given to the best film made by debut directors, at the 60th Cannes Film Festival yesterday. Meduzot, based on a script written by Geffen and directed by her and Keret, is about the life of three women in Tel Aviv. "Everything here is so far from our lives," said Keret, wearing a tuxedo and bow tie at the glittering red-carpet award ceremony yesterday. "I haven’t worn a suit since my bar mitzvah." On Friday the film won two more awards during International Critics Week in Cannes. The French Artist and Writers Guild SACD gave Keret and Geffen their best director award, while 36 French teenagers decided that the Israeli film was the winner of the "Young Critics" award. more..
Critics select UK-Lebanese film ’Both’ for short-film competition
Daily Star 5/16/2007
BEIRUT: The 46th International Critics Week at the Cannes film festival has selected the Lebanese-UK film "Both" for its short-film competition. Written and directed by Lebanon’s Bass Breche, the 12-minute film is set in London during Israel’s summer 2006 war on Lebanon. There, the solitary Moussa (Ian Hart), once a militiaman during Lebanon’s Civil War, lives in an imaginary world, where he has an obsessive relationship with his muse Helena (Andrea Estrella). Shot in London and Beirut, the film promises to draw on representations of Beirut as a place of occupation, conquest and war, and London as a bastion of democracy and cosmopolitan diversity - though London too has had its blitz and Beirut is also a city of diversity. The 29-year-old Breche, who has been based in the UK since 2003, is a Lebanese University graduate. more..
Boston Palestine Film Festival Call for Entries
Boston Palestine Film Festival, Electronic Intifada 5/8/2007
BPFF seeks to present the extraordinary narrative of a dispossessed people living in exile or under Occupation. Palestinian cinema represents a powerful means for visually interpreting the collective identity, historic struggle and emotional expression of Palestinians today. Eligibility
BPFF will showcase the diverse and creative work of all filmmakers (any nationality) exploring both historic and contemporary themes related to Palestinian culture, experience, and narrative.
The BPFF Selection Committee accepts films, videos and digital media in the following categories: Feature Films Documentaries Shorts (including animated or experimental works) Youth Work (created by filmmakers under the age of 16)
Entries can be of any length. more..
London events put contemporary Mideast art ’In Focus’
Olivia Snaije, Daily Star 5/9/2007
New series of film and video screenings tips balance strongly in favor of the avant-garde - PREVIEW -- LONDON: There have been several attempts in London lately to showcase art from the Middle East. While these efforts have endeavored to include both traditional and contemporary culture, two of the most high-profile art events last year - the British Museum’s "Word into Art" exhibition and the opening of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s new Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art - hardly qualified as cutting edge. A new series of film and video screenings at Tate Modern, however, tips the balance strongly in favor of the avant-garde. The series, titled "This Day," kicked off Friday at the UK’s contemporary art museum fashioned from a power stationwith a live performance in English by playwright and video artist Rabih Mroue. more..
Drivers ignore dying man on road
Moran Rada, YNetNews 5/7/2007
(VIDEO) Drivers maneuver their vehicles to bypass moped driver lying on road after being hit by truck. ’Not surprising, Israelis focused on themselves,’ says sociologist - VIDEO - Moshe Hai Yisraeli, a 62-year-old driving instructor, was killed Monday in an accident when he tried to bypass a truck. This accident could have become no more than another figure in the gloomy road-accident statistics in Israel. However, a video camera, located at the junction where the accident occurred, showed drivers bypassing the "obstacle," the dying man on the road, rather than stopping to offer assistance. Footage of fatal accident (Courtesy of Channel 10) Dr Gustavo Mesch, a senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Haifa, said he was not surprised that nobody stopped to help. more..
Opposition for the wrong reason
Goel Pinto, Ha’aretz 5/6/2007
This week, the artistic committee of the Yehoshua Rabinowitz Foundation is scheduled to state which film it believes the foundation should support in the archival project "Past Present." This project has stirred up a storm, at the center of which is director Eyal Sivan..... The foundation directorate, which is supposed to make the official decision on this matter, consists of 18 people, headed by Leon Recanati. However, in recent days a campaign has been waging against Eyal Sivan in the media and on the Web. His opponents state that the director depicts himself as "anti-Israeli" (a definition Sivan has never affirmed) and "anti-Zionist" (which he confirms) and is undeserving of state support. more..
Houston Palestine Film Festival, May 11-20
Press Release, Electronic Intifada 5/4/2007
Voices Breaking Boundaries is pleased to present for the first time a Houston Palestine Film Festival. This exciting festival, cosponsored by The Station, Rice Cinema and Fotofest Inc. , will bring not only cutting edge new cinema from Palestine about Palestine but will also present three directors Lina Makboul, Nida Sinnokrot and Elle Flanders along with political analyst/academic/journalist (and Angry Arab) As’ad Abu Khalil and Rice University Associate professor Ussama Makdisi.
The first annual Houston Palestine Film Festival brings an honest and independent view of Palestine and its diaspora’s society, culture, and political travails through the art of film. This group of groundbreaking cinematic texts rise above the degrading stereotypes or reductively politicized depictions that are so familiar to Houstonians. more..
Huge gulf in Mid-East narratives
Claire Bolderson, BBC Online 5/2/2007
Israel’s independence celebrations gloss over parts of history If you watch the introductory video at Tel Aviv’s Independence Hall Museum you will hear barely a mention of the Arabs who lived in Palestine before Israel became a state. If you look at a map in an Israeli school text book you are unlikely to find the Green Line, the ceasefire line which until 1967 separated Israel from the Palestinian territories. Israel stretches to the border with Jordan. It is as if the Palestinians don’t exist. And you won’t find the word "Nakba", the "disaster", as Arabs call what befell the Palestinian people when the Israeli state was created in 1948.
"If you ask people in Israel about the Nakba the majority don’t know what it is." - Eyal Danon. more..
Report: Anti-Zionist Israeli to direct movie for Israel’s 60th birthday
Haaretz Service, Ha’aretz 4/30/2007
According to the report, Eyal Sivan will be given a NIS 650,000 grant, paid for by Israeli taxpayers, to direct a film for next year’s Independence Day, Israel’s 60th. The film will be part of the "Past and Present in Israel" project, meant to promote Israel’s "Jaffa" brand citrus fruit. It will be produced by Channel 8 television, together with the Jerusalem Cinematheque and the Rabinovitch Fund. Sivan, who has resided in Paris for the past 15 years, directed the 1999 film "The Specialist," which used footage from Adolf Eichmann’s trial to portray the architect of the Final Solution as just a Nazi party bureaucrat, the radio said. The film also attempted to present Sivan’s view that Eichmann’s Jewish victims could have done more to prevent themselves from being murdered, it said. more..
Audio: Interview with "Angry Arab" As’ad AbuKhalil
Audio, Electronic Intifada 4/26/2007
Last week, As’ad AbuKhalil, creater of the Angry Arab News Service blog, was in Chicago to speak at the Sixth Annual Chicago Palestine Film Festival. The Electronic Intifada’s Maureen Clare Murphy and Ali Abunimah sat down to talk with him about the film festival selection, as well as the role Palestinian culture has had in the Palestinian national movement and its influence in the wider Arab world. AbuKhalil also touched upon current events unfolding in the Middle East, including his home country of Lebanon. Also, he recommends where one can find a good felafel sandwich in the Windy City. Listen Now -- [MP3 - 14. 5 MB, 31:45 min] more..
Mozart Festival brings ’The Magic Flute’, ’Requiem’, chamber music recitals and workshops to Palestine
Ma’an News Agency 3/26/2007
Bethlehem - Mozart is coming to the occupied Palestinian territories in April. As part of one of the largest performing arts projects ever staged in the Palestinian territories, the Palestine Mozart Festival will feature over 25 events staged in Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nablus and East Jerusalem between March 31st and April 14th. According to the festival organizers, the festival’s programme includes orchestral and choral concerts, educational workshops, a touring opera, academic lectures, film screenings, and a series of recitals by internationally-renowned Palestinian and European soloists. In total, the events will bring together over 120 Palestinian participants - including professional performers, music teachers, and students - with more than 80 European professional singers and instrumentalists. -- See also: Palestine Mozart Festival more..
Arab cinema showcased across Europe and Turkey in March and April
Ma’an News Agency 3/26/2007
Bethlehem - Arab cinema is being showcased in a number of film festivals across Europe and Turkey in March and April 2007. Films from Morocco, Lebanon, Algeria, Tunisia, the Palestinian territories, Syria, and Egypt are being screened in festivals in Italy, Germany, Turkey and the UK, as part of the ’Med-Screen’ project, which is funded by the European Union and part of the European Commission’s ’EuroMed Audiovisual II’ programme. The Brussels-based ’EuroMed Info Centre’ reports in a press release that a special non-competitive “Arabica” mini-festival is taking place in Milan, Italy while five features, six short films and seven documentaries from across the Arab world are being shown in Augsburg, Germany. more..
Rotterdam film festival looks at Middle Eastern cinema
By Jim Quilty, Daily Star 1/26/2007
Dutch buzz suggests strong local demand for independent works -- ROTTERDAM: Sometimes the best way to assess how the Middle East is represented in cinema is to leave the Middle East. One of the better places to take a look is the Netherlands, specifically the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). The IFFR is perhaps Europe’s premier festival of independent and innovative cinema. Its organizers aim to provide a platform where both audiences and the industry can sample what’s new and exciting in film. It opened Wednesday with "La Antenna" ("The Aerial"), a piece of black-and-white surrealism by Argentine director Esteban Sapir. The festival buzz around Holland’s second city is palpable, suggesting a strong local public for independent film. In 2006, 358,000 people attended IFFR, generating a total of 1. 25 million euros at the box office... more..
War with Israel spurred Lebanese filmmakers to seek new funds
By Jim Quilty, Daily Star 1/19/2007
BEIRUT: Sometimes opportunity can be wrung from disaster, even if you happen to be a Lebanese filmmaker. Finding money to produce Lebanese films was challenging enough before the Israeli bombing campaign in the summer of 2006. The cessation of hostilities didn’t alleviate matters. Though international donors have promised to pour reconstruction money into Lebanon, the lion’s share of these funds will be devoted to physical infrastructure and the like. It was a bit of a surprise, then, to find an unusually strong contingent of Lebanese filmmakers at the Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF), which was in December 2006 in the Gulf emirate. The directors were in Dubai to participate in an all-Lebanese "pitch session" - a forum where local filmmakers meet with film production companies, otherwise known by shorthand as "the industry". more..
Cinema that blurs lines and defies definitions
By Jim Quilty, Daily Star 12/30/2006
The big screen produced a variety of interesting takes on all things Middle Eastern - 2006: THE YEAR IN film - BEIRUT: Compiling a list of the "10 best films of 2006" sounds like simple work, doesn’t it? It’s more complicated than you’d think, though, at least if you’re nestled in an obscure corner of a Beirut-based English-language newspaper and habitually write about "Middle Eastern cinema." It’s a problem of definitions. Even when "cinema" just meant "film" it was a widely varied form, with feature (conventionally "narrative fiction") films assessed according to aesthetic criteria. Documentary had other concerns (it’s all about information, right? ), while short film was generally lumped together with "student film" ("practice" for apprentice filmmakers, yaani. ) These definitions don’t work anymore. more..
Student workshop highlights innovative approaches to print journalism
Palestine News Network 12/10/2006
The Department of Journalism at An Najah University in Nablus completed its course in the print media on Sunday. The 15 hours of training were given in cooperation with the Civil Forum and the Social Democratic Space at the northern West Bank university. Students who participated said that they gained a heightened understanding of the value of the print media in the video age. Topics included were as expected: accuracy in reporting, clarity, the value in being concise. One of the journalists conducting the training said that the session had “achieved the desired objectives. ” Student Anas Salman said that the session “added a lot of skills and information, particularly with interviewing skills. ”PNN’s own Nablus correspondent, Amin Abu Wardeh, was also among the trainers. more..
VIDEO - Archive of displacement
Electronic Intifada/F.A.S.T. 12/11/2006
Video, F. A. S. T. -- We have started filming the stories of Atir and Um Al-Hiran’s villagers. "As if living beside desert highways in makeshift homes with no facilities was not enough, Palestinian Bedouin villagers in Um al-Hiran and Atir now face their second, unwanted, exodus in 50 years. Drive along the desert highways around Beer el-Sabe (Beer Sheva) in the south of Israel, and it does not take long to notice clusters of makeshift houses set in from the side of the road. These Bedouin villages are ’unrecognised’ by the state of Israel, and consequently have no official status. They are absent from state planning and government maps, and receive little or no basic public services such as electricity, water, telephone lines, educational or health facilities. In total, about 40 unrecognised villages exist in the Naqab (Negev) desert. more..
Trip to Lebanon’s film vault reveals gangsters and expatriates everywhere, even in the 60s
By Jim Quilty, Daily Star 12/9/2006
Review -- BEIRUT: Civil conflict may be on the tip of Lebanon’s collective tongue lately, but gangsters and emigrants are an equally persistent theme in the national experience. Hardly a surprise, then, that both are found in the country’s cinema. If you’re looking for shades of gangsterism and treatments of the emigration, you need look no further than Michel Kammoun’s "Falafel," which just opened in Beirut, or Philippe Aractingi’s "Bosta" (2005). These subjects aren’t new to local cinema, either. Witness Mohammad Salman’s "The Black Jaguar" and Gary Garabedian’s "Abou Salim in Africa," a pair of Lebanese features from 1965 restored with EU assistance and screened at the European Film Festival this week." Jaguar" is a magnificent film - in the "so awful it’s great" tradition of popular cinema. more..
Jihad, hummous and airport security: It’s the Arab Comedy Festival, of course!
By Maureen Clare Murphy, Electronic Intifada 12/4/2006
"People don’t know anything about us. That’s why we’re doing comedy," New York Arab-American Comedy Festival co-founder Dean Obeidallah explained at the Festival’s opening night at the Gotham Comedy Club on 14 November 2006. Following sold-out shows in previous years, the 4th Annual Festival extended to six nights, featuring two stand-up comedy nights, a short film night, and three sketch comedy theatre nights (to which a fourth show was added and sold out as well). The week kicked off with a press conference held by the New York Foreign Press Center of the -- no joke -- U.S. State Department. Naturally, ignorance towards Arabs was a common theme during the Festival. Obeidallah, for one, was just another "white guy living the white guy life".... before September 11, when he became "an Arab." more..
Top global physicist, Stephen Hawking, to visit Israel and Palestinian territories
Ma’an News Agency 12/4/2006
The eminent British scientist, Prof. Stephen Hawking, will visit Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories from 7 to 15 December on a UK government-sponsored tour. Not only will he give a number of keynote lectures on his most well-known topic of interest ’The Origins of the Universe’ but he will also make time to meet many fellow scientists and academics. In the Palestinian territories, he will give a lecture at Birzeit University, situated north of the West Bank city of Ramallah, on ’The Origins of the Universe’ on Wednesday 13 December. He will give a lecture on the same topic at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem on December 14. Hawking, who is generally regarded as the greatest mind in physics since Albert Einstein, will also speak to Palestinian science students from all over the occupied Palestinian territories through a video conference... more..
Women’s film festival in Jenin
Palestine News Network 11/29/2006
The Arab American University in Tubas City in the Jenin District hosted Palestinian director Najwa Najjar as part of its second women’s film festival. The cultural and artistic aspects of Palestinian society were on display, in addition to the political. The Arab League had previously honored five out of five Palestinian films screened at the festival that hopes to communicate to massive audiences, as well as honor the artistic vision of the directors. Director of International and Public Relations, Jameela Hanaisha, said that the Arab American University’s involvement in the festival aims at promoting cross-cultural awareness and freedom of artistic expression. Hanaisha also stressed that the presence of remarkable work on the the part of, and on behalf of, students and faculty, allows crucial topics to intersect with the concerns of the majority of the Palestinian people. more..
Cairo film festival offers no shortage of choice
Daily Star 11/29/2006
BEIRUT: Just after Carthage, at the same time as Marrakech, just before Dubai - the Cairo International Film Festival opened on Monday night in the midst of what has become a rather crowded schedule of cinema events across the region. Cairo’s festival, however, has the distinction of being one of the oldest in the Middle East - it is now in its 30th year, compared to the International Film Festival of Marrakech, which is six, and the Dubai International Film Festival, which is three. (Only the Carthage Film Festival is older, having been established in 1966 as a biannual event). Over the next 10 days, well over 100 films are screening in four venues throughout Cairo.... The Cairo festival has taken some flak lately for going international at the expense of Arab cinema. more..
The 8th London Palestine Film Festival 2007 calls for submissions
Ma’an News Agency 11/24/2006
The London Palestine Film Festival 2007 is calling for submissions. The festival is scheduled to run for two weeks, starting Friday April 27th 2007 at the Barbican Arts Centre in London. This will be the eighth London Palestine Film Festival and the largest of its kind in Europe. It hopes to showcase an engaging selection of feature films, shorts, experimental work, animations, and documentaries of social, cultural and political themes related to Palestine. The Palestine Film Foundation is appealing for submissions for the 2007 festival. The organisers say, "Although we are always keen to exhibit new work, older work seldom screened is also encouraged. Video, film, experimental, art, fiction, and documentary content is sought for the festival..." more..
Bethlehem director screens Palestinian football film at Tehran International Film Festival
Palestine News Network 11/25/2006
Palestinian film director Abu Hamoud has made his hometown of Bethlehem proud by screening his documentary at the Tehran International Film Festival this month. His film, "Second Half," follows the lives of the Salzian Orthodox School’s 1989 football team during the height of the first Intifada. Abu Hamoud was on the team that year. He told PNN, “We show Israeli restrictions and aggressions against the Palestinian people during that period, and the damage directly inflicted on the players. Abu Hamoud continued, "Milad Anton Shahin was killed, while others were arrested and deported. For the team in general, practices and matches were obstructed, and teams gaining access to each other was severely hindered because of the curfew imposed on all Palestinian areas. ” more..
Al-Awda/Alternate Focus Annual Worldwide Video Contest | | |
