Cinema Palestina 25

Cinema Palestina (r)
R-existence

Marco Pasquini 2006 docu 45 min.

Five women, returning to their devastated villages in southern Lebanon after the 2006 war, recount their experiences during the conflict. Five “existences” are profiled from the million or more Lebanese driven from their homes by the fighting. Layla, Haifa, Dina, Zeynab and Fatme speak with calm and pride while sitting in what remains of their homes. They tell of life under the bombings, about the meaning of having a house, and about their feelings on encountering the destruction on their return. Moreover, they describe their enduring will to resist as a daily and tenacious act of selfaffirmation and selfpreservation. vimeo.com

Rabin, the last day

Amos Gitai, docudrama / Israel / 2015 / 153 min.

On the evening of Saturday, November 4, 1995, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is shot down with three bullets at the end of a huge political rally in the center of Tel-Aviv. His killer apprehended at the scene turns out to be a 25-year-old Jewish observant. Investigation into this brutal murder reveals a dark and frightening world that made this tragic deed possible. A subculture of hate fueled by hysterical rhetoric, paranoia and political intrigue. The extremist rabbis who condemned Rabin by invoking an obscure Talmudic ruling. The prominent right wing politicians who joined in a campaign of incitement against Rabin. The militant Israeli settlers for whom peace meant betrayal. And the security agents who saw what was coming and failed to prevent it.

Trailer: youtube.com

Rachel: an American conscience

Yahya Barakat 2005 docu 94 min.

I’ve been here for about a month and half now and this is definitely the most difficult situation that I have ever seen. In the time that I have been here, children have been shot and killed. On the 30th of January, the Israeli military bulldozed the two largest water wells, destroying over half of Rafah’s water supply. Ever few days, if not everyday, houses are demolished here.. so I feel like what I am witnessing here is a very systematic destruction of peoples’ ability to survive and that is incredibly horrifying.
Yahya Barakat, who teaches at Al-Quds University, told The Washington Report that he began work on the documentary the instant he learned that Corrie had been crushed to death by an Israeli-driven Caterpillar bulldozer.
This documentary offers rare footage of Rachel talking to a camera and describing Israeli human rights violations against a Palestinian civilian population. The film opens with grim images of dinosaur-like Caterpillar bulldozers turning urban Rafah into a garbage pile of destroyed buildings. It continues with interviews of Rachel’s fellow International Solidarity Movement volunteers, and concludes with comments from her parents
DVD. Rachel Corrie, Tom Hurndall, and international solidarity in Palestine. List Price: $25.

Integraal te zien op: www.youtube.com

Rachel

Simone Bitton 2009 docu 100 min.

Simone Bitton (Wall, Citizen Bishara) has crafted a dispassionate but devastating essay investigating the circumstances of Rachel Corrie’s death. Rachel looks to capture the spirit of Corrie’s youth and her political commitment, while delivering a rigorous excavation into the killing of the US peace activist and International Solidarity Movement member in Gaza in 2003. A few weeks after her death, an internal inquiry by Israeli military police quietly concluded that Corrie had died in an accident. Bitton’s stirring film moves between this “official” version of events and the testimony of soldiers, witnesses, and fellow activists, as well as that of Corrie’s family and friends, and her own voice, recorded in a journal. www.youtube.com

Rainbow

Abed al-Salam Shehada 1999 docu 39 min.

Gaza documentary filmmaker Shehadeh’s latest work takes as its starting point his own difficulty in coming to terms with his role as a news cameraman during the Intifada. Constantly facing experiences of horrific suffering and loss and yet struggling to find a sense of meaning or purpose on his side of the lens, he sets out to revisit friends, relatives, and, most painfully, those whose unfathomable personal losses he has documented from behind the camera. The film offers a rare glimpse of life after the cameras stop rolling, of the processes of healing and hurting that continue on both sides of the lens and as such it is a profound and moving study of the role of the news reporter.

Integraal te zien op: www.cultureunplugged.com

Ramallah

Flavie Pinatel, docu 29 min. 2014 Palestina.

An immersive sensory documentary that chronicles a day-in-the-life portrait of the city and its inhabitants, showcasing its profound generational, cultural, and economic contrasts. www.youtube.com

Ramleh

Michal Aviad (vrouw)

In July 2001, Aviad completed directing and co-producing RAMLEH (60 min, beta, co-produced by Yulie Gerstel,) a social-political film about the lives of four women in the town of Ramleh. Ramleh, a Jewish- Arab town, is a powerful example to the disintegration of a country of displaced people torn by religious, national and cultural differences. The film premiered at the Jerusalem International Film Festival. www.youtube.com

Rana's wedding (Al Quds fee yom akhar)

Hany Abu Hassan 2002 fiction 90 min.

Rana wakes to an ultimatum delivered by her father: She must either choose a husband from a list of eligible men, or accompany her father abroad. Thus begins this romantic drama about a Palestinian woman who wants to get married to the man of her own choice with only ten hours to find her boyfriend in occupied Jerusalem, Rana sneaks out of her father’s house to find her forbidden love, Khalil. Winner: – Grand Prix – International Mediterranean Film Festival, 2002. Winner: Nestor Almendros Award for Courage in Filmmaking – Human Rights Watch Film Festival, NYC, 2003. www.youtube.com

Rasheed

by Samia Badih 2016 | Documentary | 74 min

Rasheed documents the life of the filmmaker’s late uncle, Rasheed Broum, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Through the filmmaker’s own personal journey, Rasheed captures one of the many war stories from the southern city of Sidon, Lebanon.
Trailer: vimeo.com

Recognized

Ori Kleiner 2007 docu 61 min.

Director’s statement: “Bedouin usually appear in the Israeli collective consciousness as either “ethnographic” or “demographic” issues. Their representation by means of various objects: coffee, camels, tents, carpets keeps most Israelis from seeing them as people with hopes and dreams, frustrations and fears, as possessing not only a past but a future as well. Recognized focuses on the fragmented experiences of Nuri al Ukbi, Salman Abu Jlidan, Eid Al Athamin, Ibrahim Abu Afash, and Samaher Abu Jlidan whom history has cast in the roles of protagonists antagonized by a state that has established itself upon their ancestral lands. Recognized is not a film about Bedouin, but about people forced into a role of Bedouin as the only identity the State of Israel allows them, and at the same time the very identity it systematically denies them. Substandard citizenship, coupled with daily existential obstacles posed by the State, are what this film is concerned with.”

Recollection

Kamal Aljafari (ook producer), docu, 70 min. Palestine 2015, Arab. gesproken met Engelse ondertitels, DCP.
A visual tour around Jaffa, through rare archived footage that subtly depicts every house, road or square. A visual memory record of a city, people and parents in a city that was once known as the “Bride of the Mediterranean www.youtube.com

The Red Army-PFLP Declaration of World War

Masao AdachiKoji Wakamatsu 1971 docu 69 min.

This rarely seen work is a milestone in militant filmmaking and vital testimony to an era of global revolutionary beginnings. Renowned, and already “notorious”, Japanese filmmakers and activists Masao Adachi and Koji Wakamatsu stopped in Beirut on their return from the Cannes Film Festival in 1971. There, in collaboration with a newlyemerging Japanese Red Army (JRA) cadre and leaders of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) including Ghassan Kanafani and Leila Khaled, they produced this newsreelstyle depiction of the everyday activities of Palestinian fighters so as to call for a worldwide Maoist revolution. The Red Army / PFLP Declaration of World War sometimes seems technically crude compared to Wakamatsu and Adachi’s larger oeuvre. But it is ultimately the film’s urgency and unashamed militancy that sets it apart from that betterknown work – in which the two had been compelled to circumnavigate the Japanese censor. This film does not flinch from its message. It offers a rare and tantalising window on a key chapter of collaboration between Japanese and Palestinian revolutionaries and filmmakers and remains striking testimony to the shared optimism and commitment of the PFLP and JRA’s young cadre. www.youtube.com

The Red Stone

Ahmad Damen 2012 docu 50 min.

Taking its title from the characteristic red stone with which many of Jerusalem’s historic buildings are built, Ahmad Damen’s investigative documentary focuses on Palestinian areas of west Jerusalem that were occupied and depopulated in 1948. While tracking the architectural and family histories of these splendid properties, Red Stone introduces the buildings’ current occupants, the Israeli real estate companies trading in their “exotic” appearances, and the original owners mant of whom are now barred from their homes. www.youtube.com

Remember us now, wandering

Jennifer Kelley Walker, docu 11 min. 2015 Palestina.

A poetic, expository, and observational documentary that considers how American foreign policy in Israel and the West Bank affects Palestinian refugees living in Aida refugee camp on the outskirts of Bethlehem. vimeo.com

'Remember us

Dalia Abuzeid, docu, 50 min. Jordanië

‘Remember Us’ is a feature docudrama unveiling stories of a forgotten minority in Jordan: Palestinian refugees from Gaza. Citizens of nowhere, these refugees and later generations were never granted citizenship, depriving them from social, civic and human rights, with limited access to education, health, traveling and lifestyle. Witness the rare success stories of Gaza refugees in Jordan. Remember Us takes you on a journey through their surreal perspective; see their life through their eyes, thoughts, hopes and dreams; experience the emotional war, history, humanity and psychology of what it’s like to be a refugee; lose all sense of belonging; struggle against the lack of basic rights in order to achieve personal goals. What if you were born a refugee of a country you’ve never even seen? www.youtube.com

Première 28 november 2015 in Jeruzalem, waar de regisseur zelf niet bij kon zijn, zie https://www.facebook.com/rememberusfilm/timeline.

Rasheed

by Samia Badih 2016 | Documentary | 74 min

Rasheed documents the life of the filmmaker’s late uncle, Rasheed Broum, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Through the filmmaker’s own personal journey, Rasheed captures one of the many war stories from the southern city of Sidon, Lebanon.
Trailer: vimeo.com

The Reports on Sarah and Saleem

Dir. Muayad Alayan, fiction DCP 127 min. Palestine/Netherlands/Germany/Mexico 2018, Arab/Hebr/Eng, Eng. subtitles
Trailer: www.youtube.com

The affaire of a married Palestinian man and a married Israeli woman in Jerusalem takes a dangerous political dimension when they are spotted in the wrong place at the wrong time leaving them to deal with more than their broken marriages.

Restored Pictures

by Mahasen Nasser-Eldin, documentary 22 min, Palestine 2012

Trailer: vimeo.com

Filmed between Bethlehem, Haifa and Nazareth, this film portrays Karimeh Abbud, born in Bethlehem in 1894, who was the first female professional photographer in Palestine. She quickly gained notoriety in a profession largely dominated by men. Thanks to his photos and correspondence, we can see the life of his country before the forced exodus of 1948 and the singularity of this forgotten photographer.

Road to Sufsaf

by Nour Maatouk; documentary 52 min. Lebanon, 2017. Arabic, Engl. ST
Trailer: www.youtube.com

Ali Zeidan, a Palestinian engineer born in Al Sufsaf, reconstructs the map of his village. Al Sufsaf was the last village that fell back in 1948  under the zionist forces. The story started when the ex Prime minister of Israel David Bangorian quoting “adults will die and young people  will forget”. It’s when Ali with a group of 3rd generation refugees decided to fight back history through memory and time bringing their village back to life.

Reporter Suspended

by Sanabel Al-Hoot, Salam Yahya, Renad Nasser, 5 min. 2016
The making of “Off frame AKA Revolution until Victory” by Mohanad Yaqoubi

Resistance recipes

Dasa RaimanovaAlicia QandilYazeed Abu Khadair 2013 docu 31 min.

Cuisine has long been a meeting ground for passion and politics in the case of Palestine.Resistance Recipes is a short documentary that tells of several exemplary culinary and agricultural projects inspired by resistance in Palestine today. The film includes an account of independent ecofarming, a look at a women’s farming and marketing cooperative, and discussion of a buylocal initiative. vimeo.com

Return to Haifa

Kassem Hawal 1982 fiction 85 min.

Kasem Hawal’s adaptation of the Ghassan Kanafani novella Return to Haifa is a rarely seen gem. Kanafani’s seminal allegorical story tells of Safia and Saeed, who are forced by gunfire and artillery to leave their 5month old son Khaldoun in the city of Haifa when they are expelled in April 1948. Twenty years on, with the 1967 war and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the couple are able to travel to Haifa. They discover that Khaldoun, now Dov, was adopted by Jewish immigrants arriving in 1948, and – now 20 – has recently enlisted in the Israeli army. The story, and the film – which remains true to Kanafani’s style and purpose – proceeds to pursue impossible questions – who is the real mother? Who is the real father? What is a homeland, and whose is it? And, finally, what is the way to Return to Haifa.

Kasem Hawals bewerking van de Ghassan Kanafani novellé “Return to Haifa” is een zeldzaam gezien juweel. Kanafani’s symbolisch meesterwerk vertelt het verhaal van Safia en Saeed. Ze worden gedwongen om hun 5 maanden-oude zoon Khaldoun te verlaten in de stad Haifa wanneer ze er worden verdreven in april 1948. Twintig jaar later, ondanks de oorlog van 1967 en de Israëlische corruptie in de Westelijke Jordaan en de Gazastrook, kan het koppel naar Haifa reizen. Ze ontdekken dat Khaldoun, nu Dov, geadopteerd is door Joodse immigranten die in 1948 zijn aangekomen. Ondertussen is hij 20 en pas aangeworven in het Israëlische leger. Het verhaal blijft trouw aan Kanafani’s stijl en opzet. Er worden onmogelijke en moeilijke vragen opgeworpen. Wie is de echte moeder? Wie is de echte vader? Wat is een thuisland, en van wie is het? En tenslotte wat is de weg om terug te keren naar Haifa? www.youtube.com

Rico in the night

Mohanad Yaqubi 2001 fiction 8 min.

This short video$ art collaboration between Yaqubi and French dancer choreographer Jean Gaudin is evidence of a new standard and style of video art production being undertaken in the West Bank. Yaqubi places Gaudin’s enigmatic character Rico in the heart of a Ramallah night, setting the dancer’s staccato movements against a back of the nocturnal city’s hospitals, empty market places, family homes, and refugee camp alleyways. Neither narrative nor entirely abstract, this is a mood piece in which Rico takes the audience on a surreal whirlwind tour of a city as close to sleep as it ever gets. vimeo.com

The Road to Silverstone

Johan Eriksson 2013 docu 57 min.

A team of young, brave Palestinian mechanical engineering students succeeds in building Gaza’s first Formula racing car despite failing to get crucial components from European suppliers due to the longstanding siege on the territory. Led by the relentless and visionary Ghassan Abu-Orf (PhD in mechanical engineering from University of Manchester), they face numerous seemingly impossible obstacles in their quest to take their invention to England to compete at the Silverstone racing circuit.
Winner:
Silver Prize, Objectif d’Argent at the Millenium Film Festival in Brussels
Trailer: www.youtube.com

Roadmap to apartheid

Eron DavidsonAna Nogueira USA 2012 95 min.
In this award-winning documentary, the first-time directors take a detailed look at the apartheid analogy commonly used to describe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Narrated by Alice Walker (author of The Color Purple), Roadmap to Apartheid is as much a historical document of the rise and fall of apartheid in South Africa, as it is a film about why many Palestinians feel they are living in an apartheid system today, and why an increasing number of people around the world agree with them.
While not perfect, the apartheid analogy is a useful framework by which to educate people on the complex issues facing Israelis and Palestinians. Our film delves into those issues, comparing the many similar laws and tools used by both Israel and apartheid-era South Africa. The audience will see what life is like for Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and inside Israel while gaining a deeper understanding of the conflict with the help of respected analysts on the subject. Combined with archival material and anecdotes from South Africans, the film forms a complete picture as to why the analogy is being used with increasing frequency and potency. www.dailymotion.com

The Roof

Kamal Aljafari 2006 docu 61 min.

Part essayistic meditation, part family portrait, The Roof is an eloquent, understated exploration of physical and psychic place developed via an account of filmmaker Kamal Aljafari’s family history. Returning to his parents’ and grandmother’s homes in Ramle and Jaffa, now part of Israel, Aljafari uses elegant cinematography, unhurried rhythms, and fragmented narratives to wonder how space, time, and history have been moulded by politics and institutionalized neglect. The roof of the title is an absent one, on the unfinished house where Aljafari’s family has lived since their resettlement in 1948. It functions as a place of waiting marked by constant deferral. Curator Jean Pierre Rehm has called the film “as much a stylistic as a political manifesto”, one that “reveals not so much the meaning of an absent roof, but the architecture of identity, place, and present pasts.” www.youtube.com

Roshmia

Salim Abu Jabal, documentary 70 min. UAE, Qatar, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, 2014, 70 min

Yousef and his wife Amna have lived in a shack all alone in their eighties since 1956 in what seems to be a life of serenity; far away from the loudness of modern life. Life remains peaceful in Roshmia until the Israeli authorities endorse a new road project and order to confiscate their land, demolish the shack and throw them out. A friend of the couple tries to secure a compensation from the municipality but the shack is Yousef’s home that he insists on keeping; living in bliss and comfort as ever, however the negotiations continue and tension grows among the three. Furthermore, and besides the physical displacement and despair they are nearly facing, Yousef and Amna are about to go on separate ways. www.youtube.com

Roubama

Rakan Mayasi 2012 fiction 15 min.

Inspired by the Mahmoud Darwish poem Lessons from Kamasutra in the Art of Waiting, Roubama is a magic realist portrait of a young refugee pitting his vivid imagination against the grim reality around him.
Trailer: www.youtube.com

Rainbow

Abed al-Salam Shehada 1999 docu 39 min.

Gaza documentary filmmaker Shehadeh’s latest work takes as its starting point his own difficulty in coming to terms with his role as a news cameraman during the Intifada. Constantly facing experiences of horrific suffering and loss and yet struggling to find a sense of meaning or purpose on his side of the lens, he sets out to revisit friends, relatives, and, most painfully, those whose unfathomable personal losses he has documented from behind the camera. The film offers a rare glimpse of life after the cameras stop rolling, of the processes of healing and hurting that continue on both sides of the lens and as such it is a profound and moving study of the role of the news reporter.

Integraal te zien op: www.cultureunplugged.com

Rough Stage

Toomas Järvet, documentary 74 min. Estlonia / Palestine, 2015

Maher, a former political prisoner, an electrical engineer by profession, but an artist at heart, is a man who starts a quest against the society in order to stage the first original contemporary dance performance in Palestinian history. But to do so he must overcome several obstacles – time, money, insured dancer, his disapproving family and friends, and cultural norms. Set in today’s most contested location, Maher’s story is at once a parable about a society in conflict, and a modern take on — and inversion of — “The Jazz Singer,” where the real war is between dreams and tradition. vimeo.com

Route 181: fragments of a journey

Michel KhleliiEyal Sivan 2004 docu 270 min.

In the summer of 2002, for two months, a Palestinian (Khleifi) and Israeli (Sivan) director traveled together from the south to the north of their country of birth, tracing their trajectory on a map and calling it Route 181. This virtual line follows the borders outlined in Resolution 181, which was adopted by the United Nations on November 29th 1947 to partition Palestine into two states. Their journey carries them to the heart of the many physical and social fault lines that today divide and define the peoples of this land. “A staggering journey through Israel” – Liberacion. “A riveting account… unforgettable images that pervade the sights and, in some cases, penetrate the heart and soul of the viewer” – Daily Star (Beirut). www.youtube.com

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