Mais Darwazah 2008 docu 54 min.
Director’s statement: “The home of the Palestinian today, is no longer defined by geographic borders Take Me Home is a first person pilgrimage tracing the legacy of a family who helped establish revolutionary movements at a time when the Arab world’s faith in the individual’s freedom and autonomy was selfevident.” The sweeping desert steppes of Jordan as it turns into Syria mark the first few moments of “home”. The stirring score of a female vocal against the traditional tabla drum tells us where we are going. This is the journey one JordanianPalestinian woman takes whenever she crosses the border to visit her grandmother and great aunt in Damascus. The magic of her film is in its exploration of the concept of “home”: As Darwazeh makes the journey through the JordanianSyrian border, she is not “going home.” The journey, visually punctuated by black and white family photographs of relatives in Palestine, and by archival prints of Palestinian exiles, soon discloses its truth: that this is no conventional homecoming.
Natalie Portman, drama 95 min. Frankrijk 2015.
A drama based on the memoir of Amos Oz, a writer, journalist, and advocate of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Behalve een familiedrama is ‘A Tale of Love and Darkness’ ook een politiek verhaal. Het
hoeft niet te verbazen dat Portman daarvoor gekozen heeft. Ze is trots op haar Joodse afkomst en verkondigt graag haar liefde voor het Hebreeuws, een taal die ze hier voor het eerst ook op het witte doek in de mond neemt. Ze schrikt er normaal gezien ook niet voor terug om haar politieke overtuiging te uiten. Zo liet ze onlangs nog in het vakblad The Hollywood Reporter optekenen dat ze ‘geschokt en ontgoocheld’ was door de herverkiezing van de Israëlische premier Benjamin Netanyahu, die ze ‘racistische opmerkingen’ aanwrijft.
In Cannes ruilt ze die scherpe bewoordingen in voor meer omfloerste kritiek. Dat ze zich
perfect kan vinden in de overtuiging van Amos Oz bijvoorbeeld, sinds jaar en dag de grote
voorvechter van de vredesbeweging in Israël. ‘Ik vind zijn ideeën bijzonder sterk’, zegt ze.
‘Neem nu de manier waarop hij het conflict tussen Israël en Palestina kadert. Hij vergelijkt
Israël en Palestina met twee kinderen die mishandeld zijn door dezelfde vader, Europa.
Palestina door de koloniale bezetting, Israël door het antisemitisme. Maar in plaats van elkaar daarin te vinden, herhalen ze dat gewelddadige gedrag tegenover elkaar. Die visie op de realiteit is uniek, en dat maakt iemand als Amos Oz zo bijzonder.’
Er zijn ook absoluut mensen nodig die het aandurven de zaken anders te bekijken, meent
Portman. ‘We moeten onze eigen mythologie in vraag durven te stellen’, besluit ze. ‘Iedereen vertelt zichzelf verhalen om zijn identiteit te vormen. Maar je moet ervoor oppassen dat je door die verhalen niet de voeling met de realiteit verliest. Anders loopt het slecht af. Je moet je aanpassen aan de realiteit. Het past niet om te blijven vasthouden aan een droom van honderd jaar geleden. Je moet kijken naar vandaag, wat nu nodig is om iedereen een aanvaardbaar leven te geven. Het is de enige manier om de problemen op te lossen.’ www.youtube.com
Israel/France/Germany/Palestine, 2011, 80 minutes
Director: Tawfik Abu Wael
Official Selection – Toronto Film Festival 2011
Nour and Iyad, a Palestinian couple living in East Jerusalem, are getting ready to move to Paris. He is a surgeon and she is a budding actress. On the way to the airport, an accident delays their departure. Nour starts to question their future move.
Rachel Leaa Jones 2010 Docu 15 min.
Targeted Citizen was released by Adalah: The Legal Centre for Minority Rights in Israel to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (2010). The film draws on a range of expert testimonies to survey discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel. While detailing de jure inequalities in areas spanning land, housing, employment, education, civil, and political rights, Targeted Citizen also exposes (and lampoons) popular racisms through a series of onthestreet interviews by Palestinian comic duo ShammasNahas. www.youtube.com
Director: Buthina Canaan Khoury | Producer: Buthina Canaan Khoury
Genre: Documentary | Produced In: 2008 | Story Teller’s Country: Palestine
Synopsis: A personal family story about my brothers who returned to Palestine after living in the US for 30 years to fulfill our father’s dream and establish a business. Not only returning to Palestine but also, investing their education, experience, knowledge and the family money to open the first micro brewery in the entire Middle East right after Oslo agreement of the peace process between the Palestinians and the Israelis. In spite of the hardship & constant obstacles of the unpredictable life in Palestine Nadim Khoury and his brother Dahoud Khoury’s success had given hope to others. Taybeh Brewering Co became the central focus for the international media and attracted many tourists and locals to trust the new taste of the revolution in making excellent quality local product. taybehbeer.com
Vibeke Løkkeberg 2010 Docu 83 min.
Emotionally devastating, Tears of Gaza is less a conventional documentary than a record, one presented with minimal gloss, of the 2008-2009 bombing of Gaza by Israeli forces. Working with footage provided by Palestinian cameramen working during and after the offensive, director Vibeke Løkkeberg explores the impact of the attacks on the civilian population. The resulting film shuttles between the actual bombings and their aftermath, on the streets and in the hospitals. The footage is as indelible as it is horrifying: White phosphorous rains over families and children, children’s bodies are pulled from ruined homes… Recounting the horrors she has witnessed, one young girl collapses and sinks out of frame. With this unflinching, if often distressing, depiction of the 2008/9 offensive, Løkkeberg demands we confront the unbearable costs of waging such wars against civilian populations. www.youtube.com
by Nasser Samara 2016 | Drama Comedy (film and animation), 31 min
When his roommate asks him to leave their apartment temporarily, a struggling Palestinian-Mexican-American actor is forced to deal with his insecurities in a world quick to stereotype.
Muziek: ‘No. 13 Dance of the Knights’ van The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden ( • )
Trailer: www.youtube.com
Rashid Masharawi 1998 Docu 26 min.
Palestinian director Rashid Masharawi (Waiting and Laila’s Birthday) conveys the palpable sense of tension that he perceives below the surface of daily life for the Palestinian population during the period of the “peace process.” The film focuses on the act of observation itself, eschewing spoken dialogue altogether for a narrative that is produced rather through the editing of images, music, and incidental sounds on the track. Tension is organized around the natural cycle of sunrise and sunset, restated in terms of another “natural” work cycle: the many waves of Palestinian day workers who move through gates and checkpoints to labour in Israel and return each evening. This is a far too rarely seen work of exceptional quality by one of Palestine’s foremost directors.
Diana Allen 2009 Docu 54 min.
Terrace of the Sea (Jal el Bahar) was shot in 2008 in an unofficial Palestinian Bedouin gathering established in 1948 on a stretch of beach north of Tyre, in south Lebanon. Structured around a collection of family photographs taken over three generations, the film engages with the historical experience of this community by focusing on their precarious relationship with the environment, and in particular on the role that the sea plays in their lives. Terrace of the Sea examines the experiences of the Ibrahim family – not simply through the prism of nationalist politics, but also through their relationship to work and to the physical environment. More broadly, the film is a meditation on the process of memory and on the distances between photography and film, land and sea and – between seeing and being seen. Director Diana Allan is codirector of the Nakba Archive, and an anthropologist specialising in visual and oral memory. vimeo.com
by Roger Hill & Anas Hamra, documentary 6,5 min. 2016
Tawfiq’s Reef chronicles the plight of Palestinian fishermen in Gaza, heavily restricted in the area in which they can fish, often indebted, shot at, harassed or imprisoned by the Israeli Navy on the narrow sliver of fishing waters available to them off the Gaza coastline, making this one of the most dangerous professions in the world. vimeo.com
by Tara Hakim, experimental documentary 25 min, Canada, Jordan 2018, English, German, Arabic with English subtitles
Trailer: vimeo.com
Shot entirely on an iPhone, Teta, Opi & Me is a poetic, meditative, multilingual, and feeling-driven short film, documenting the intricacies of the artist’s playful process in capturing her grandparents’ enduring romance through social, political and racial adversity. He comes from Bethlehem and she comes from Vienna. Incorporating poetic filmic scenarios, vérité scenes, interviews, and home movies, the work is an intergenerational dialogue that explores themes of family, love, and the intermingling of cultures.
by Hanaa Mahameed; documentary 22 min. Palestine, 2017. Arabic, Engl. ST.
Among yellow dunes and rough mountains, there lives around 25 thousand Palestinians. The Israeli government has been trying for decades to limit them to the smallest area possible. In more than 40 villages denied of recognition lives the Negev Bedouins. They carry the Israeli nationality to stay in their homeland, but they are battled by being deprived from the basic rights and life conditions, such as housing, water, and electricity. The Bedouins want to live and develop on their grandparents’ historical lands, but the Israeli State has another plan. It wants to seize these lands and use them to expand Jewish settlements. To Israel, Bedouin Palestinians in the Negev Desert are nothing but a mirage.
by Nihad Sabri (Pal.), 24 min, Palestine 2018. Arabic, Hebrew with English subtitles.
Trailer: www.youtube.com
Yahya is a young Palestinian from Bethlehem who sneaks into Israel illegally, looking for a job. One day, he is seriously injured in a car accident, and then moved to an Israeli hospital. His real identity is exposed, and he is deported with two police officers from Tel Aviv to Ramallah.
by Rifat Audeh; documentary 56 min. Jordan, 2017 English
Trailer: vimeo.com
In 2010, a group of global activists and concerned citizens came together to launch the Freedom Flotilla, a convoy of humanitarian ships, to highlight the suffering of Palestinians in illegally-blockaded Gaza, and break this blockade. Israel attacked the Flotilla, killing and wounding dozens and imprisoning the hundreds more of international participants. This historic event transformed into a battle for the hearts and minds of the world. Shot from aboard the Freedom Flotilla, narrated by one of its survivors and following up subsequent media coverage, the film reveals how the civilian ships were attacked in international waters, and how the dead activists and their comrades who defended their vessels were portrayed in the aftermath. The film tells the story of the life-changing voyage preparations and launch, utilizing numerous footage sources, and analysing claims of Israeli spokespersons. These claims are juxtaposed with the survivors’ statements, including some never-before-seen footage from aboard the vessels. The film reveals what really happened and how it was spun.
Abdelsalam Shehadeh 2008 docu 52 min.
“Those were the days when girls were prettier, when eyes were in all colours, without any colour! What’s different now? The camera, or the eyes?” asks Abdelsalam Shehadeh in this poetic homage to the studio photographers of the 1950’s to 70’s. Set partly in a refugee camp in Rafah, this is a remarkable look back at fifty years of Palestinian and Arab history, through photographs, reportage and the voices of these photographers today. The portrait image has always been something to cherish, but Shehadeh shows that it has also been turned into a tool of control and object of fear through ID systems, and, of course, into a form of commemorating and remembering the missing and the dead. To My Father is a personal and moving film that confirms the talent of Gazaborn director Shehadeh (Gaza, Another Kind of Tears, Rainbow), who has worked all over the world as a director, cameraman and journalist. A photo here is not just a photo: it brings history to life. www.youtube.com
by Ahmad al-Bazz/Yasser Jodallah, short docu, ? min, Palestine 2014. V
Price as Best Emerging Director; as it recounts the tale of an entire nation through a personal life-story, conveys a profound message of humanity and rejects oppression by calling upon the unity of all Palestinians – to cite the author: “We shall not be defeated by our suffering”. www.youtube.com
Alberto Arce – Mohammad Rujailah 2009 docu 112 min.
Israel declared the besieged Gaza Strip an “enemy entity” in 2007. In the winter of 2008/9, it launched a massive military offensive against this “entity” – operation “Cast Lead”. Despite a ban on foreign correspondents and humanitarian aid workers entering Gaza during this offensive, members of the International Solidarity Movement had managed to enter and were present in Gaza as the bombing began on December, 27th 2008. Together with two correspondents from Al Jazeera International (Ayman Mohyeldin and Sherine Tadros), these activists stayed in Gaza throughout the offensive, gaining access to hospitals, ambulances and homes to produce this harrowing firsthand account of the war. www.youtube.com
Andrea Paco Mariani, Nicola Zambelli 2011 84 min.
At-Tuwani is a small Palestinian farmers village set among the arid hills south-east of Hebron, in Area C of the West Bank, under complete Israeli administrative and military control. The village, which since 1999 is permanently threatened with evacuation, is repeatedly subjected to the attacks carried out by the settlers from the close Israeli outpost of Havat Ma’on and settlement of Ma’on.
To answer to this well established system of injustice, ten years ago a Popular Resistance Committee was born in the area, as a direct expression of the local farmers revolt and at the same time as an effective instrument to destabilize the mechanism of control and repression realized by the Israeli occupation.
With the support of many Israeli activists and international peace groups, the movement is growing and taking root in the area as a possible way to build and imagine a different future.
The inhabitants of At-Tuwani live in a very particular context. From a certain point of view, their situation symmetrically reflects the difficulties that the Palestinian people face collectively in the entire West Bank: military occupation, the absence of legal protection on the basis of the rights of citizenship, the continuously expanding Israeli settlements and the resulting tensions.
To answer to injustices the local community founded the non-violent Popular Resistance Committee which with the support of peace activists is trying to destabilize the mechanism of control and repression.
Hele film: youtu.be
Uri Rosenwaks, Eyal Blachson, docu, 2015 95 min.
Synopsis: The ancient Romans called Lod the City of God. Today, it is a dilapidated suburb ten minutes from Tel Aviv, and a home for both the Palestinian drug barons and fanatical Israeli settlers. Abject poverty has cultivated an environment of racism and violence, and the 75,000 Muslim, Jewish and Christian inhabitants live from day to day in constant fear. All the city’s conflicts are linked, and both the police and politicians, religious leaders and local gangs are involved. The changing mayors have simply driven Lod further and further into the abyss, until the Israeli government was finally forced to step in and appoint one man to save the collapsing city. Uri Rosenwalks and Eyal Blachson’s film offers an immersive, cinematic view on Lod’s inflamed state, and uncovers the nuances in the strained relations between Jews and Palestinians. From the forefront of gang wars to religious and national confrontations, but also to the courageous men and women who have not yet abandoned their beloved, cursed city. Narrated with the fervour of a thriller, and two protagonists who could not have been written any better had they been made up.
Trailer: vimeo.com
Interview met de regisseurs: www.youtube.com
Anna Fahr 2014 | Drama Short | 18 min
A tale of friendship and exile in the northern mountains of Lebanon set against the backdrop of the Syrian war, as the condition of displacement and alienation passes down to yet another generation, yet another country in the Middle East. www.youtube.com
Hind Shoufani | Lebanon, Palestine | 2014 | DCP | Arabic| English subtitles | 120 min.
INCLUDEPICTURE cinemaarabe.nl * MERGEFORMATINET
This film explores the last 70 years of Palestinian politics seen through the prism of the life of the filmmaker’s father, Dr. Elias Shoufani, a leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and an academic and leftist intellectual who was one of the leaders of the opposition to Arafat within Fatah for 20 years. Born in Ma’liya in the Galilee and educated at the Hebrew University and with a PHD from Princeton, the multilingual and erudite Dr. Shoufani was also the Arab world’s leading analyst of Israeli affairs for more than a generation. Using betamax, VHS, 8mm, 16mm, HD video, DV video, stills and animations/graphics, this documentary is an archival film tracing 70 years of Palestinian history in his life, from the Galilee in 48, to Princeton university in the 60’s, to Beirut in the 70’s and to the current war in Syria today. The film recreates Palestinian history using archive, family photos/8mm films, old photos, cartoons, animation, macro-photography footage, worldwide …
Trailer: vimeo.com
Fanfare van de Eerste Liefdesnacht documentary Netherlands 51 min.
INCLUDEPICTURE liefdesnacht.nl
* MERGEFORMATINET
The Amsterdam ‘Band of the First Love Night’ made a musical tour around the West Bank in 2011, to show solidarity with the people.
Their reception on the part of the Palestinian people was heartwarming.
The reception by the Israëli army: tear gas
Full movie: youtube.com
Laila ElHaddad – Saeed Taji 2007 docu 22 min.
When Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula in 1982, they built a wall along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt. The city of Rafah was split in half. Over subsequent years, frequent border closures further isolated the Gaza Strip, and Palestinian trade was forced underground. Since June 2007, virtually nothing crosses the perimeter of what has been called the world’s largest prison. There remains, however, a dangerous means of trade between Gaza and the outside world – a network of tunnels used to smuggle everything from weapons to food to heart medicine. Tunnel Trade is an exclusive inside look at this underground economy from the perspective of the people who run it. Filmed in May 2007 for AlJazeera International’s People & Power programme, it explores how a handful of individuals from Rafah have gone underground to achieve what politics otherwise makes impossible.
Arabisch en Engels gesproken met Engelse ondertiteling
De documentaire toont de situatie in Rafah, de stad die in tweeën werd gedeeld door de Israëlische muur die langs de grens van Gaza met Egypte loopt. Sinds het bestaan van de muur werden er geheime tunnels gegraven. De bewoners lijden enorm onder de Israëlische operaties om de tunnels te vernietigen. Reeds duizenden huizen werden gesloopt. Voor de smokkelaars heeft de tunnelhandel met veel meer te maken dan alleen met politiek en wapensmokkel. Het werk wordt enkel doorgegeven van vader op zoon en betaalt veel beter dan een normaal salaris in Gaza. Dit zorgt voor verdeeldheid in de plaatselijke gemeenschap
Saeed Taji Farouky is een Palestijns-Britse freelance documentairemaker, documentairefotograaf en journalist. Na zijn studies Communicatietheorie aan de Tufts University en documentairefotografie op Boston School van het Museum voor Schone Kunsten, regisseerde hij zijn eerste documentaire in 2004. In datzelfde jaar richtte hij het documentaireproductiebedrijf ‘Tourist With A Typewriter’ op, gewijd aan documentaires over mensenrechten en sociale rechtvaardigheid. Zijn werk richt zich op het Midden-Oosten en Noord-Afrika, waar hij onderwerpen heeft behandeld over de onafhankelijkheidsbeweging van de Westelijke Sahara, de nasleep van de Israëlische oorlog van 2006 op Libanon en de belegering van Gaza. Zijn artikels worden gepubliceerd door o.a. The Independent, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Economist, BBC online en Reuters. Hij heeft documentaires gemaakt voor omroepen zoals Channel 4, Al-Jazeera International en CBC Canada.
Laila El-Haddad is een Palestijnse freelance journaliste, schrijfster, blogger, en media-activiste uit Gazastad. Ze is momenteel gevestigd in de Verenigde Staten. El-Haddad is de auteur van ‘Gaza Mom: Palestine, Politics, Parenting, and Everything in Between’ (Just World Books, 2011) en co-auteur van de ‘The Gaza Kitchen’ (Just World Books, 2012). Ze is tevens co-auteur van ‘The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict’ en beleidsmedewerkster van ‘al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network’. El-Haddad schrijft voornamelijk voor de websites van ‘al-Jazeera English’ en de ‘Guardian’. www.youtube.com
Maryam Kashkoolinia 2012 Animatie 7 min.
Working with earth animation techniques, Iranian animator Maryam Kashkoolinia’s short captures all the claustrophobic foreboding of a journey through the Gaza tunnels.
Trailer: www.youtube.com
When director Pary El-Qalqili was 12 years old, her Palestinian father left his German wife and children in Berlin and returned to Palestine. Years later, he turned up on their doorstep, and now lives in the basement of their small row house, lonely, withdrawn “in his turtle’s shell,” and filled with rage.
In this tender and sorrowful film, the filmmaker strives to understand her estranged father, even embarking with him on a road trip to meet family members spread all over the Middle East.
The Turtle’s Rage tells the story of a mysterious man whose life has been molded by flight, expulsion, and exile.
Nahed Awwad 2004 docu 3 min.
25 Kilometers is a journey through the checkpoints and rocky roads of the West Bank. Starting in Ramallah, where the filmmaker lives and works, this short film documents her attempt to reach her family’s home in Beit Sahour (near Bethlehem). Inside the West Bank, Palestinians spend considerable time either being forced to avoid checkpoints or to wait in line. Over time these checkpoints have became a part of the daily routine of thousands. This routine in itself gives rise to some unexpected practices some people try to joke about the checkpoints, others feel powerless and even convince themselves that this is part of a “normal” life. Having had the privilege to leave Palestine from time to time, the filmmaker came to believe that one of the worst things that could happen to her is getting used to checkpoints, for this would signal giving up hope for a normal life and a future. vimeo.com
Samer Salameh – Alaa Alsaadi 2009 docu 34 min.
25 Thousand Tents or More tells the stories of some of the hundreds of Palestinian families that are currently stranded in the AlTanaf detention camp situated in the “noman’s land” between today’s Iraqi and Syrian borders. Following the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Palestinians who had found refuge in Iraq after 1948, have been forced to flee and take refuge elsewhere once more. Samer Salameh’s film gives rare voice to camp residents who tell of the hardships they endure, what led them to flee Iraq, and their hopes for the future.
Tom Hayes docu 98 min. 2014 (première jan. 2015)
Shot over a period of 25 years, Two Blue Lines examines the human and political situation of Palestinian people from the years prior to the creation of Israel to the present day. By primarily featuring the narratives of Israelis whose positions run counter to their country’s official policy, Ohio-based filmmaker Tom Hayes provides a portrait of the ongoing conflict not often depicted in our mainstream media.
trailer: vimeo.com
Recensie: mondoweiss.net
(Tom Hayes maakte eerder over Palestina: Native Sons: Palestinians In Exile, 57 min. 1985. Trailer/downloaden: www.vimeo.com
Martin Sheen narrates this examination of the lives of three Palestinian families who fled their homes in 1948 and have lived as refugees in Lebanon ever since. Originally released in 1985, Native Sons probes the roots of the Palestine/Israel conflict through lives of individual people. Utilizing archive footage dating from as early as 1935, the film provides an accessible introduction to “the Middle East Conflict.”).
Ahmad Natche: Palestine | 2012 | Arabic English and French dialogue with English subtitles | 80 minutes
Scandinavian premiere | Söndag 8/9 kl 17:30 Sal A | Drama.
SYNOPSIS: “Two meters of this land are enough for me now”, wrote the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. Very close to his tomb in Ramallah —during a summer evening—, some people are preparing a music festival in an open-air theatre that will be broadcast on TV.
DIRECTOR’S BIO: Ahmad Natche was born in Seville (Spain, 1974) to Palestinian father. He studied at the University of Sevilla and in Cuba. In Cuba he directed The Foreigner (El Extranjero, 2000), which won Best Fiction short film at the FAD Awards, Barcelona. As an editor he received an Icaro prize for Dear Camilo (2007). He has also written as a critic in several film magazines. Trailer: vimeo.com
Peter Speetjens – Hanro Smitsman 2004 docu
In 1982, following Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, the PLO was evacuated from Lebanon, while the international community undertook to protect Palestinians remaining in the country. However, Israeli defense minister Ariel Sharon declared that ‘2,000 terrorists’ remained in Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Monitored by the Israeli army, a Lebanese militia entered the camps to exterminate these remaining ’terrorists’. Two days later more than two thousand civilian inhabitants were killed: men, women and children, in what the United Nations officially declared to be genocide. The film centers on the search for justice of four survivors who are among a group that has initiated legal action against Sharon and others responsible for the killings.
Nederland / Israël
Documentaire
50 minuten geregisseerd door Hanro Smitsman en Peter Speetjens
2000 Terrorists is een film over het bloedbad van 1982 in de Palestijnse vluchtelingenkampen Sabra en Shatila in Beiroet en het proces dat 23 overlevenden aanspanden in België tegen de Israëlische premier Ariel Sharon (en 19 anderen). De film is een soort van drieluik. Het volgt vier van de betrokkenen in hun dagelijks bestaan in Shatila en reconstrueert www.youtube.com
Jacqueline de Bruijn, documentary (in Dutch) Netherlands 2010 26 min,
1974 Two female students from Leiden University were sentenced for delivering courier services to Palestinian restistance.
Full story: anderetijden.nl
