by Michel Khleifi, docu 30 min. Israel, 1985. V
Since the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948, countless Palestinian villages have been erased from the map and their inhabitants. Ma’loul, just west of Nazareth, is one such ruined village. It was inhabited principally by Palestinian Christians, who were forced to leave to Lebanon or Nazareth. Since then and once a year, Ma’loul’s original inhabitants are allowed to come back to the place of their hometown, on the day when Israel celebrates its independence. For this occasion, they have developed the habit of organizing a picnic on the remains of their ancient village.
Production:Marisa Films, CBA
by Laila Abbas, 2016, drama, 15 min
Nader and Abed roam the mountains and dig caves to look for historical remains. The two boys deliver the pieces they find to an antiques dealer who gives them little money in return. What they find in one remote cave challenges their friendship. Things become more complicated when adults force themselves into the children’s world.
Salim Daw 2006 docu 60 min.
With the establishment of Israel in 1948, some one million Palestinians were expelled from their homes most became refugees, a minority of these remained inside the borders of what became Israel. Today some 300,000 of these internal refugees reside in Israel, dreaming to return to their original villages and homes. Many of them still keep their old house keys. Mafateeh tells the stories of these families, portraying the emotional turmoil encountered by people who are constantly flung between hope and despair, pain and longing, dream and reality. Director Salim Daw embarks on a journey around the Galilee through the remains of the original villages. A refugee himself, he contrasts his personal memories with those of the characters he meets joining them in their struggle for equal rights in the present, and in their dream of returning to their villages, some of which no longer exist, and others of which have been rebuilt as Jewish towns and villages.
Jumana Manna docu 2015 UK 68 min.
Robert Lachmann was a German-Jewish ethnomusicologist. In the 1930s, his radio show “Oriental Music” explored the musical traditions of Palestine and included regular live performances by musicians from different ethnic and religious groups. Inspired by Lachmann’s musicological studies, Palestinian artist Jumana Manna travels through Israel and the Palestinian territories of today with recordings from the programme. What do these songs sound like now when performed by Moroccan, Kurdish, or Yemenite Jews, by Samaritans, members of the urban and rural Palestinian communities, Bedouins and Coptic Christians?
When a true fascination for history meets the sounds of the rababa, the saz, the oud and tin cans, a cultural diversity emerges that subverts the distinction between “Arab” and “Jewish”. There are no national borders here, only different kitchens where people make music together – with their guests, while cooking, while someone makes the coffee. Until the music becomes so infectious you can’t help but dance along.
Trailer: www.youtube.com
by Marco Proserpio, docufilm/animation 93 min. Italy 2018.
Trailer: www.youtube.com
In 2007 Banksy slips into Palestine to paint on the West Bank Barrier. Someone takes offence at a piece depicting an Israeli soldier checking a donkey’s ID. A local taxi driver decides to cut it off and sell it on eBay. What follows is a story of clashing cultures, art, identity, theft and black market. It is not one story, but many. Like Banksy’s art would be meaningless without its context, so the absence of it would be meaningless without an understanding of the elements that brought his artwork from Bethlehem to a Western auction house, along with the wall it was painted on.
by Hamdi AlHroub, documentary 14 min. Palestine, 2014, Arabic, Engl. ST
Jerusalem: parkour is forbidden. But a group of Palestinian boys loves too much running, jumping among the buildings and obstacles, expressing their wish for freedom with their body strength. And they dream about an “impossible mission”: doing parkour right by the Damascus gate, symbolic place of Palestine and occupation.
by Samira Badran, Animation 13 min, Spain 2017.
Trailer: vimeo.com
Palestine: a body is trapped at a checkpoint; an essential mechanism of the Israeli occupation. The body is pierced by this structural and physical violence, aggressive and arbitrary, which prevents and attacks its freedom of movement and its existence.
by Ines Moldavski, documentary Israel 2018, 28 min. (Berlinale 2018)
Trailer: www.berlinale.de
Tinder. Woman seeks men. Man seeks women. Everything could be so simple if she weren’t in Israel and the guys nearby that the app suggests in search mode weren’t in the West Bank. Israeli filmmaker Ines Moldavsky makes herself the subject of her investigation. In her work The Men Behind the Wall she crosses these and other boundaries in order to enter into conversation nonetheless. Some of the men show themselves, others read poems aloud – time and again the talk comes back to their needs, their lust, the possibility of sharing that lust. The filmmaker’s aesthetic strategy is that of a double exposure in her search – she experiences the personally unfamiliar physical space in Palestine as well. The conversations oscillate between virtual phone calls and concrete encounters. The artist stands provocatively at an intersection in downtown Ramallah, dressed in a red spaghetti strap dress, outstretched arms balancing a microphone boom in the air. Violence resonates – in the search for a violation of boundaries.
by Rina Castelnuovo-Hollander, Tamir Elterman, documentary 89 min, Israel 2017. (IDFA 2017 en in 2018 op tv vertoond)
For the past seven years Muhi, a brave and spirited Palestinian boy has been living in an Israeli hospital, unable to return to his home in Gaza. Caught between two worlds and two peoples, Muhi is raised in paradoxical circumstances that transcend identity, religion and the conflict that divides his world. His time at the hospital is running out and Muhi now faces the most critical choices of his life. www.youtube.com
Cherien Dabis 2006 fiction 12 min.
A young Palestinian girl will do whatever it takes to buy a birthday cake. Eleven year old Mariam begs her mother for the extra money she needs to buy a cake at the local bakery. Her mother begrudgingly relents, but when Mariam arrives at the bakery, she realizes that she still doesn’t have enough. Determined to get the cake, she sets out to brave the obstacles and land some cash. What begins as a simple trip to the bakery turns into a journey that depicts not only the subtle tensions of a politically charged environment, but also illustrates the grief that can result from growing up under occupation.
by Mahdi Fleifel. Groot-Brittannië, Palestina, Libanon, Nederland – 2016, 30 min, 2016
With his latest film “A Man Returned,” Danish-Palestinian director Mahdi Fleifel hopes to shed new light on refugees’ lives on Europe’s borders, but also to provide insight into the grave issue of drug addiction in the refugee camps. Berlinale Shorts.
Mahdi Fleifel’s “A Man Returned” is a love story from the refugee camp of Ain El-Helweh in Lebanon, a place torn apart from within and without. Photo: Nakba FilmWorks
Mahdi Fleifel spent two years in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain El-Helweh in Lebanon in the 1980s before his family settled in Denmark when he was nine. For years, he has been returning to the camp, resulting in his two previous films “A World Not Ours” (2012) and “Xenos” (2014), both selected for the Berlinale.
Mahdi Fleifel, who is based in Amsterdam, studied film at the University of Wales and completed an MA in writing at Royal Holloway, London, before he graduated from the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield, England, in 2009. His debut documentary feature from 2012, “A World Not Ours,” was widely acclaimed, earning him over thirty awards including prizes at the Berlinale, the Edinburgh Film Festival and DOC NYC.
“A Man Returned” is a British-Dutch-Danish co-production directed and shot by Mahdi Fleifel, who has also produced together with Patrick Campbell for Nakba FilmWorks, a London-based production company established in 2010 by Fleifel and Irish producer Patrick Campbell.
The documentary premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festival in January and is selected for the Berlinale Shorts competition. www.youtube.com
Sameh Zoabi 2011 fiction 78 min.
Twenty–something Palestinian Israeli slacker Jawdat wants to have fun with his friends, chat on his mobile and find love. Instead he navigates unconvincing dates and wrestles with his Hebrew college entrance exam. Meanwhile, his curmudgeonly olive–farming father, Salem, is determined to draw Jawdat and his whole community into struggle against an Israeli cell phone mast he believes is poisoning the villagers with radiation. Salem’s war against the antenna soon disrupts Jawdat’s own phone reception, jeopardising his dating prospects and setting father and son on a collision course. Sameh Zoabi’s (Be Quiet, 2006) debut feature is a rare and rewarding film: a warm–hearted comedy that moves slyly between political satire and generational drama. Britse Premiere in 2012 op London Palestine Film Festival. A hilarious handling of a situation involving a cell phone tower installation in olive farming village of Palestinian Israel, and the radiation fears that unite people to express their contempt. The youth of the village have their own ideas and priorities of life but they do chip in and make their presence felt on an issue which stirs up emotions leading to a climax that is to be seen to be enjoyed. A thoroughly enjoyable and heart warming film to the end. I love the way the director has given freedom to each character to shine in their part which adds up to a fine viewing experience. www.youtube.com
Alaa Desoki and Areej Abu Eid, Palestine 2013
Synopsis
Manshar Ghaseelo is a sarcastic take on the dictionary of verbal sexual abuse women are subjected to, as well as their visual rape regardless of how covered-up they are¦ Harassment has nothing to do with how a woman is dressed but with how society allows men to see women as bodies. Manshar Ghaseelo features animation and live footage.
Both filmmakers Alaa Desoki and Areej Abu Eid are from Gaza, and recently graduated with a degree in Television and Radio. They trained with Shashat Women’s Cinema, who produced their films.
Desoki’s films include Sardine & Pepper, with Athar Al-Jadili, 2011, and Noise! 2012, and Abu Eid’s films include Kamkamah with Eslam Elyan, 2011, and Separation, 2012.
Their films have shown at Shashat’s annual Women’s Film Festival in Palestine.
Raneen Jeries 2010 docu 14 min.
Established in the late 1870s, the neighbourhood of Manshiyya lay to the northeast of the Palestinian city of Yaffa (Jaffa). By 1944, the neighbourhood was home to some 12,000 Palestinians as well as 1,000 Jews. It was well known locally for its Cafe Al Ansharah, a prominent meeting place for public officials, political leaders, and businessmen. But due to its location north of Jaffa’s centre, and hence between that town and Tel Aviv, Manshiyya soon become a target for Zionist military and expulsion plans, its ethnic cleansing commencing in April 1948, with Palestinian inhabitants expelled to Jordan as well as Gaza and Egypt. Continuing her series of oral history films produced with Zochrot, this short film by Raneen Jeries documents the testimonies of Saleh Masri and Iftikhar Turk, two internally displaced Palestinian refugees from pre1948 Manshiyya. www.youtube.com
by Nicholas Damuni 2013 Drama short
Five young students from different backgrounds share an apartment in Ramallah. Confined to their apartment due to a curfew and skirmishes outside, they decide to make Maqloubeh.* At first in disaccord over the ingredients, the friends finally find common ground to finish the dish. Just as they are about to enjoy it, an unexpected guest interrupts, turning the day upside down.
Maqloubeh pays witty homage to the famous Palestinian dish, following five friends confined by a curfew as they attempt to perfect the recipe. After disagreeing over ingredients and methods, they finally establish common ground and complete their meal… only to be interrupted by an unexpected guest.
*Maqloubeh (Upside down): Traditional Palestinian dish, the ingredients vary from town to town. www.youtube.com
A Documentary About Honor Killings In Palestine
Filmed in 2007. 48 min.
A gripping portrait of women, whose lives were dictated by a moral code, Maria’s Grotto explores honor killings in Palestine through the stories of four women: one is wrongly accused of dishonoring her family and then murdered; the second dies after being forced by her brothers to swallow poison; the third survives repeated stabbings inflicted by her brother; and the fourth is a Hip-hop singer who dares speak out about honor killings, and faces death threats.
Jessica Habie, speelfilm, 2014, 75 min.
Trailer: vimeo.com
Review: http://electronicintifada.net
A story of a war waged on imagination. A painter’s resistance, courage and spirit can never be imprisoned in this highly stylized story of the conflict of two frustrated artists on either side is Israel’s militarized borders. Inspired by the creative journey of renowned Palestinian artist in exile Hani Zurob and on true stories and testimonies from the region, we witness expression, confinement, torture, jealousy, courage and freedom as both artists from each culture strive to paint a picture of life surrounded by conflict.
Produced by Baher Agbariya. Thirst (Attash) 2004, Last Days in Jerusalem (2011), Man Without a Cell Phone (2010), Omar (2013). Edited by Luis Carballar Amores Perros (2000), Manorca (2008), Sin Nombre (2009), The Devil’s Double (2011), Immigrant (2012). Sound Design by Martin Herndandez, Amores Perros (2000), Babel (2006) Into the Wild (2007), The Loneliest Planet (2011) On the Road (2012).
Starring Ali Suliman as Khaled, Paradise Now (Golden Globe Winner for Best Foreign Film2005), The Lemon Tree (2008), Pomegranates and Myrrh (2008), The Attack (2012); Guy El Hanan as Eyal, An Israeli radio personality and an accomplished playwright and; Haale Gafori as Azzadeh author of the original poetry featured in Mars At Sunrise. Soundtrack by Itamar Ziegler and Tamir Muskat of Balkan Beat Box and Moshen Subhi
Ghada Terawi 2009 fiction 57 min.
Masarat (“Travels”) is a collection of four enigmatic shorts about Palestinian women’s lives made by leading Palestinian women filmmakers. The collection was produced by SHASHAT, a Ramallahbased NGO supporting the exhibition and production of global women’s cinema. The collection begins with Ghada Terawi’s Golden Pomegranate Seeds, a fairytale about a girl who remains silent in the face of tremendous oppression wed to a real story of the Palestinian women who speak out. Far from Loneliness, by Sawsan Qaoud, then tells the story of three older women farmers and their taxing predawn journey from the field to the vegetable market. They describe how the earth is their companion and confidant. Mahasen NasserEldin’s Samia documents a feisty and committed 71yearold woman’s struggle to remain in Jerusalem and promote female education. The last film in the collection is Dima Abu Ghoush’s First Love, a tender encounter with the innocent blooming of love detailed through the lives of young women who discuss the role parents play in their personal lives.
by Freja Nanadowa Rohde Monney, docu 7 min. 2017.
Producer: Ayah Jaber and support Filmlab
A portrait of a young Palestinian girl. We follow her day, from morning to evening, and are invited into her private world.
Monika Borgmann – Lokman Slim 2005 docu
Between September 16 and 18, 1982, for two nights and three days, the killers of Sabra and Shatila went about their crimes. At the time, the massacre deeply shook publics throughout the world. Today, though, the event has been almost forgotten outside the region. Many unanswered questions remain over the events of September 1982. Not least: what drives people to such extremes of brutality? And how are such perpetrators able to live on in the wake of their crimes? Massaker is a provocative, at times unsettling study of six such perpetrators men who participated in the massacre of Sabra and Shatila both on orders and on their own initiative. Claustrophonic and unflinching, the film combines an investigation into the mental dispositions of the killers with ruminations on the political factors that allow such instances of horrifying collective violence to occur, and to go unpunished. Winner – International Critics Award, Berlin Film Festival 2005. www.youtube.com
Liana Badr 2006 docu 3 min.
I was trying to relax on Thursday afternoon when a different kind of football match started playing in front of my half closed eyes
Eran Torbiner 2003 docu 54 min.
Matzpen, an Israeli socialist organization, never had more than a few dozen active members. Still, at the end of the sixties and beginning of the seventies, it was considered a real threat to the Israeli political and social consensus. Most of Matzpen’s members were Israeli born, coming from the core of Israeli society. Their fight against Zionism and against the occupation, as well as their contacts with Palestinian and European left wing activists, were the cause of threats and slander, as well as political and social isolation. The film touches on the main issues of the Zionist Palestinian struggle, through the eyes of some of the organization’s prominent figures, their ideas, opinions and activities, then and today. www.youtube.com
Cherien Dabis U.S.A./Qatar/Jordan Language: English and Arabic. 98 min.
May has it all—a celebrated book, a sophisticated New York life, and a terrific fiancé to match. But when she heads to Amman, Jordan, to arrange her wedding, she lands in a bedlam of family chaos she thought she’d transcended long before. Her headstrong, born-again Christian mother so disapproves of her marrying a Muslim that she threatens to boycott the wedding. Her younger sisters lean on her like children, and her estranged father suddenly comes out of the woodwork. Meanwhile, doubts about her marriage surface, and May’s carefully structured life spins out of control. As with her debut feature, HYPERLINK “http://history.sundance.org/films/5666” Amreeka, Cherien Dabis lovingly breathes life into a world rarely depicted on screen. She takes us to contemporary Jordan, where ancient traditions, burgeoning modernity, and Western imitation deliciously collide, and nothing is quite what it seems. Taking a star turn in the title role, Dabis expertly captures the knotty dynamics of a household of women, mining the inherent humor and pathos as her irresistible characters stumble through rocky familial and romantic terrain.
Vraag: is Palestina toch voortdurend aanwezig op de achtergrond?
Een uitspraak: Dabis refuses to ignore the turbulence of the region, despite the focus on interpersonal relationships in the film.
“Jordan is a really unique place because of the stability it has enjoyed. It has given people a real perspective on the region,” says Dabis.
In one memorable scene, the sisters are quarreling at a Dead Sea resort when a fighter jet booms past the sunbathers, a reminder that war is not as far as it might seem, and a reality check that makes their interrupted squabble seem petty.
Palestine is the unspoken backdrop of the story. “Growing up in the diaspora – that’s very much what Palestine is. It’s a longing; it’s a conversation; it’s an obsession and a preoccupation. It takes on all these different forms and shapes.” www.youtube.com
Jela Hasler, docu 9 min. Zwitserland, 2015
De Golanhoogten, het heuvelachtige gebied op de grens tussen Libanon, Syrië, Jordanië en Israël, gelden al millennia als omstreden gebied. Assyriërs, Arameeërs, Grieken onder leiding van Alexander de Grote, Romeinen en Ottomanen – ze walsten allemaal door het strategisch gelegen gebied. Tijdens de Zesdaagse Oorlog in 1967 veroverde Israël de hoogvlakte om haar veertien jaar later officieel te annexeren en er radarposten te bouwen. De VN was unaniem in haar verwerping en de lokale Druzen blijven zich verzetten tegen de bezetting. Iedere keer als het rommelt in de regio – zeker nu er al jaren een bloedige burgeroorlog heerst in Syrië – is de spanning hier om te snijden. Maar dat is de situatie bezien vanuit het perspectief van een mens. Voor herkauwers met zeven magen is het leven op de Golanhoogten zo slecht nog niet. Het gras had malser kunnen zijn, maar het klimaat is aangenaam en de rust wordt slechts verstoord door honden en een enkele cowboy. Jela Hasler beheerst de kunst van het relativeren. Dat bewees ze eerder al met een film die aanvankelijk lijkt te gaan over een pornoproducent, maar uiteindelijk vooral een onthullende blik verschaft in het onbegrip van haar familieleden over haar bestaan als filmmaker. www.youtube.com
Mona Hatoum 1988 fiction 15 min.
Mona Hatoum’s video work Measures of Distance, traces a motherdaughter relationship. Links between the two women are played out across time and over geographical and cultural distance. This experimental video work by one of the most celebrated Palestinian contemporary artists comprises voices, images and layers of words. Barely visible behind a veil of Arabic letters (and arranged so as to give the impression of looking through a barbed wire fence), the artist’s mother is filmed taking a shower a scene recalling a moment of intimacy in the artist’s home in Beirut. Now in “exile”, the daughter reads aloud in English letters received from home sentence after sentence, the mother expresses her longing for her daughter. The video can be seen as a continuation of Hatoum’s earlier performance work: it represents a contrast between youth and age, between closeness and separation, homeland and exile. www.youtube.com
Jessica Habie 2007 docu 13 min.
Hani Zu’rob, one of Palestine’s most prominent emerging visual artists, has been stuck in Paris for more than a year. Originally travelling to France for a rarely permitted three month stay, Hani has been unable to return to his wife and homeland due to Israel’s severance of diplomatic ties with the Palestinian Authority after the democratic election of the Hamas Government. Hani is joined in Paris by another deeply respected Palestinian artist, Kamal Boullatta, who shares his own story of an exile that began in 1967. Meet Me Out of the Siege unravels the stories of both men, and observes as these two resilient and patient artists reflect on the origins of creativity, the pressures of everyday life under occupation, and the geometric language of exile. Winner, Best Short Documentary, Moving Pictures Magazine 2007 vimeo.com
by Michel Khleifi, docu 104 min. Palestine 1980. V
This is a film about the Palestinian population living in the Palestinian West Bank and under Israeli occupation. Michel Khleifi just looks and shows, listens and makes it heard. The smallest everyday acts reflect peoples’ frustration, living in an inferior position on the land of their ancestors. This film is a great human geography lesson, seen from the inside and an incentive to political interrogation. Farah and Sahar are confronted to both occupation and women condition in the Palestinian society.
Michel Khleifi was born in 1950 in Nazareth and lived there until 1970. He moved to Brussels to attend film and theater school INSAS (National Higher Institute of Performance Arts and Broadcasting Techniques). He graduated in 1977 in direction for theater, radio and television. He is the best known of Palestinian directors in Europe. From his very first long feature film, La mémoire fertile (1980), he has chosen to tell the story of the Palestinian people his own way mixing poetic metaphor with documentary discipline.
Production:Marisa Films, Z.D.F., N.O.V.I.B.
by Yousef Jamil Salhi, fiction 6 min. Palestine 2017 Language Arabic with English subtitles.
Producers Yousef Salhi, Akram Dwaik Production company initiative “We Have A Cinema”
Trailer: www.youtube.com
Sami always tries to remember things, but his memory does not always help. However, he doesn’t really care about solving this problem, he deals with it as if it were something normal – unlike his sister Yara who always makes fun of him. Their mother puts an end to this and presents Sami with solutions. Nonetheless, these solutions are often temporal, not permanent. How will Sami deal with that?
Hanna Musleh 2008 docu 87 min.
Four decades ago, the three Palestinian villages of ‘Imwas, Yalo and Beit Nouba in the Latroun enclave of the West Bank were razed to the ground after Israel occupied the territory. Today, the residents of those villages remain displaced and barred from returning, while Israel treats the land as if it were part of Israel and refuses to acknowledge the Palestinian history of the area. Israeli citizens enjoy barbecues and picnics in the Jewish National Fund’s “Canada Park”, oblivious to the crimes perpetrated in their names on that very land. Musleh’s documentary traces the buried histories of these Palestinian villages through oral histories, archive film and photography, and expert testimonies. www.youtube.com
by Thaer alSahli
If the “MiG” didn’t show up, it could have been just another ordinary day. But it was there, looking for love to shatter and blow away the features of my exile “the camp,”Palestine’s twin.”
In this lyrical first-person film, the filmmaker bears witness to the aftermath of a direct Syrian regime strike on the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk, the first since the Syrian civil war began in 2011. The bombing, which hit a school and a mosque, caused a massive exodus of refugees from the camp—upwards of 70% of its residents by some estimates www.youtube.com
Ali Nassar 1997 fiction 105 min.
Ali Nasser’s ‘period piece’ is set in the Galilee in 1964, where Israel’s Palestinian subjects, still living under the military regime that prevailed until 1966, are obliged to negotiate a range of social and political obstacles as they go about their lives. Following the experiences of Mabruq, the innocent and good hearted young man upon whom the role of the village fool is imposed, the film cuts to the heart of controversial issues of collaboration, traditional authority and forbidden passions. It offers emotional and personal testimony to a time and place in recent Palestinian history often ignored in writing as well as film.
Julian Schnabel UK 2011 fiction 112 min.
Drama. UK. 2011. 112 min. (op dvd). Een Palestijns meisje, Miral, groeit op in een weeshuis dat werd opgericht tijdens het eerste Palestijns-Israelisch conflict. Het weeshuis vormt een veilige haven en Miral heeft geen idee van de problemen die zich in de buitenwereld afspelen. Als ze 17 is gaat ze les geven in een vluchtelingenkamp en wordt zich bewust van de strijd die haar volk levert. Ze wordt verliefd op Hani, een politiek activist, en moet kiezen welke weg ze zelf zal volgen.
Review:
An amazing movie which let us thing of a bright future for the Lebanese cinema. Good direction -amazing actress and actresses-great story and techniques. The story is about the war of 2006 between Israel and Hezbollah , and specially about the village “AYTA l CHAAB” and the people in this village who stayed fighting for 33 days alone armed with faith in Allah and courage. The story of “Em Abbas” played by the amazing Carmen Lebbos who is a fighter who lost her sun and husband in earlier wars . The story of “Youssef ” and ” Mohammed Srour” – two Hezbollah members who are ready to give there life for there village and there country. And Avi the heartless Israeli captain who attacks on “AYTA L CHAAB ” and ready to do every thing to feed his ego . www.youtube.com
Director: Anat Tel Mendelvich Docu Israel 2012 58 minutes HebrewArab
Like any devout Muslim, Maor goes to the mosque, studies the Qu’ran, and prays towards Mecca five times a day. But there’s something which sets Maor apart – she was born May Davidovich, to a Jewish family in a small Israeli town called Karmiel, and converted to Islam when she was 18 years old. Mom, Dad, I’m a Muslim picks up four years later, when Maor has begun to look for a husband who’s observant of her adopted faith. This informal domestic portrait illustrates Maor’s plight of being torn between two worlds, longing to find a place in the Arab community while dealing with the shunning she faces from her own. Maor and her family’s journey towards a new synthesis, illustrated in humble everyday moments, is a testament to the triumph of human values over institutional walls.
Themes: Documentary www.youtube.com
Roy Dib, 2014 | DRAMA SHORT | 19 MIN
A Lebanese gay couple take an unlikely (and illegal, under Lebanese law) road trip from Lebanon to Ramallah, chronicling the journey and their off-camera observations in a revealing video diary. A travel film in a political setting where travel is forbidden, starring two male lovers in a setting where homosexuality is a punishable felony. Shot with a hand-
held camcorder, Mondial 2010 is a film on love and place that creates its own universe of possibility. www.youtube.com
Simone Bitton 2004 docu 96 min.
Documentaire. Frankrijk. Israel. 2004. 96 min. Mur is een persoonlijke cinematografische meditatie over het Israëlisch-Palestijnse conflict. De documentaire werd gemaakt door een regisseuse die de sporen van haat uitwist door haar dubbele Joods-Arabische identiteit tot uiting te brengen. De film volgt de scheidslijn die één van de meest historisch toonaangevende landschappen in de wereld verwoest en openscheurt. Een scheidslijn die de een gevangen zet en de ander opsluit. De bewoners aan beide kanten van de muur banen zich een weg door het geraas van boormachines en bulldozers heen. Awards: Sundance Award Doc. feature Special Jury Prize. www.youtube.com
by Nikolaj Christensen
Mohammed Khatib is a corpulent, charismatic and uncompromising man. Having lived and worked as a doctor in the Shatila camp in Beirut for many years, he has now dedicated his life to collecting historic artefacts, documenting the Palestinian cultural heritage. In a dark and moist room at the end of a narrow ally, Khahib has established a small museum, exhibiting the items he has been collecting since the 00’s – in the camp, in Beirut, and in the rest of Lebanon. In the museum Khaleb greats visitors and tells the stories of the artefacts. The film will follow Khaleb’s efforts gathering items for his museum and his outreach work in the camp, trying to involve the new generations in his fight for preserving the Palestinian cultural heritage.
The film will show us how in some places of the world people must and will fight hard to keep their cultural heritage and why this is crucial to some because only through this heritage they will be able to exist and withhold their identity and legitimacy. The film has been supported by Danida, the Danish foreign aid agency, and will be broadcast on Danish television, DR K.
Interview with Khatib: www.youtube.com
Tamar Kay, docu 31 min. Israël, 2015
A building in Hebron, which has been deserted by its Palestinian owners, is called “The Mute’s House” by the Israeli soldiers stationed there and by the tour guides who pass by.
The building’s only occupants are a deaf woman, Sahar, and her eight-year-old son, Yousef. The family’s unique story, which unfolds against the backdrop of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is told through the eyes of the young and charismatic Yousef, as he goes through his daily routine in both the Jewish and Muslim areas of a city torn apart by hatred and violence.
Trailer: www.youtube.com
Synopsis
Rudaina Abu Jarad is the mother of two girls and two boys, despite her family and community at first objecting to her becoming pregnant because of her condition.
Fadya Salah Al-Deen – docu, 2013, 8 min.
Biography
Fadya Salah Al-Deen is from Hizma, Palestine, and has trained with Shashat Women’s Cinema. Her film credits include three documentary shorts and two fiction shorts: Rahaf, 4 min, 2008, fiction, (co-director); The Shadow, 3:30 min, 2010, experimental; Just Forbidden, 5 min, 2011, fiction; This is the Law! 17 min, 2012, documentary, a Shashat Women’s Cinema production.
My Children, My Love was screened at Shashat’s 9th Women Film Festival in Palestine in 20 cities across the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Permanent Delegation to UNESCO in Paris also screened it on the occasion of the UN International Solidarity Day with the Palestinian People. Over 700 people attended the screening.
I was very moved by the simplicity and discretion used in the film to show us the tragic story of this woman. The film technique is very elegant and aims only at showing the optimism displayed by this mother who’s bearing her child”
Mahmoud ben Mahmoud, MADE in MED jury member
Omar Shargawi 2009 docu 52 min.
My Father From Haifa tells the very personal story of Danish-Palestinian director, Omar Al Shargawi’s search for understanding and reconciliation with his father Munir, who fled Palestine as a child in 1948. The film covers Omar’s bid to persuade his father to embark on an emotionally fraught journey back to Haifa with the aim of finding his childhood home. As much a personal as a political exposition, the doc opens an intimate window on a father and son vying bitterly for control over memories of their family history, yet ultimately growing closer mentally and emotionally as they confront that past together. Their voyage, to Damascus and then Haifa, is one of heart and of body – and Shargawi’s intelligent composition offers us a stylish as well as a privileged view of this moving journey. www.youtube.com
Mohamad Soueid 2008 docu 87 min.
Inspired by the Vietnamese revolution, a call to transform every Arab capital into a “Hanoi for the Palestinian Revolution” echoed far and wide in the 1960s and 1970s. This documentary delves into encounters between the Vietnamese and Palestinian experience. It traces remains of these encounters in today’s Beirut, the Arab capital which most vividly lived out this notion of an “Arab Hanoi” – from the outbreak of the civil war in 1975 until the withdrawal of Palestinian fighters in 1982. My Heart Beats Only for Her focuses on the story of Hatem Hatem, known by his nom de guerre “Abu Hassan Hanoi”. Born in south Lebanon and affiliated with the Fatah political movement, Hatem fought for its brigades. After the Israeli invasion, he lost his connection with Fatah, returning to his native village and distancing himself from political activity. Throughout the film, Hatem’s son Hassan examines the memory of Fatah’s “Vietnamese moment” in Lebanon. He travels between Beirut, Dubai, and Hanoi, contemplating these three cities’ very different, and yet intersecting, relationships at the level of revolution, economy, war and urban development. Mohamad Soueid is a pioneer of independent film and video production in Lebanon who has published extensively on Lebanese cinema and video art.
Yulie Cohen Israel, 2008, 78 minutes, Color, DVD, Subtitled (Hebrew) Order No. W09956
Few filmmakers have probed issues of Israeli nationalism and Israeli-Palestinian relations more completely or intimately than Tel Aviv-born Yulie Cohen. In My Israel, Cohen revisits her acclaimed trilogy My Terrorist (2002), My Land Zion (2004), and My Brother (2007) with new footage, fresh perspective, and her trademark fearlessness. For Cohen, Israel is the land of her ancestors, the land her parents fought for during the 1948 war and the land she herself served as an Air Force Officer during the Entebbe crisis. In 1978, working as an El Al stewardess, she survived a terrorist attack in London that killed a colleague and left her with shrapnel in her arm. Embarking on a difficult and emotional journey, she attempts to free the surviving terrorist who attacked her, to question the myths of the state that she grew up in, and to reconcile with her ultra-orthodox brother after 25 years of estrangement. My Israel is an account of remarkable courage and understanding set against the last turbulent decade of Israeli history, successfully combining Cohen’s 10-year oeuvre in an incisive and refreshing new way. www.youtube.com
Shashat filmfestival 2013
Nabil Ayouch 2010 docu 85 min.
In 2000, Moroccan director Nabil Ayouch delivered a signal work of Arab social cinema with the multi award winning Ali Zoua: Prince of the Streets, a drama crafted with the street children of Casablanca and celebrated by the San Francisco Chronicle as “cinematic magic”. A decade on, Ayouch’s documentary My Land finds him adopting an equally radical approach to his subject: Palestinian refugees and the Jewish Israelis who live on their lands. After recording testimonies (personal, historical, and political) from Palestinians in the camps of the region, Ayouch visits their homes in present day Israel, testing the attitudes of today’s inhabitants toward the land’s Palestinian past and owners. In a bold, at moments unsettling intervention Ayouch then stages a series of virtual encounters, exposing the current inhabitants to intimate video testimony from the refugees whose homes they now occupy… My Land is a searching and original work aimed at the very core of the Palestine/Israel conflict. www.youtube.com
Tone Andersen 2005 docu 25 min.
In the northern Galilee, Ali and Therese are not allowed to build a house on their own land. They take up the fight with the surrounding community of Misgav, whilst living in a house under a constant threat of demolition. Despite fines and prison terms, they are refusing to give up, hoping they will eventually be able to live in their house legally. My Land tells one of the stories from within Israel that rarely reach the attention of the mainstream media. While there are aggressive government sponsored campaigns and financial incentives used to persuade Jewish Israelis to settle in the Galilee, residents of pre existing Arab towns struggle to get planning permission in their own lands. My Land exposes the plight of that 20% of the Israeli population who are Palestinian Arabs. Being Israeli by citizenship, Palestinian by nationality and Arab by ethnicity, they are seen as suspect in some Arab countries and yet are treated as an internal enemy by the state of Israel.
Roma Essa 2010 docu 74 min.
While fighting for her daughter’s right to receive adequate treatment for her leukemia, Aisha – a Palestinian woman living in the West Bank, undergoes a process of empowerment. Suddenly, this battered woman, is no longer afraid to stand up to her husband, to her occupiers, to the authorities and to anyone’s who is in the way of her daughter’s path to health. Since Hamas took power in Palestine, many of the funds provided by Europe have been cut off. No one realizes that cutting the funds doesn’t harm the authorities as much as the citizens, and most of all this jeopardizes the health care system and children’s lives.
Trailer: www.youtube.com
Dima Abu Ghoush 2007 docu 10 min.
From the artist’s statement: “’What does ‘Palestine’ mean to you?’ The question sounded simple, even naive at the beginning. But after this journey into peoples’ minds, hearts, and memories, searching for the true meaning of Palestine, it no longer sounded so simple.” Abu Ghosh’s short consists of a mental and emotional search for what constitutes individuals’ understandings of their homeland Palestine, while statehood, borders, sovereignty and the other markers of a recognized national space remain absent.
by Ahmad Saleh, fiction 11 min, Germany / Jordan / Palestine 2016.
Language Arabic with English subtitles
Producers Stefan Gieren, Ahmad Saleh Production companies Academy of Media Arts Cologne
Trailer: www.youtube.com
A cruel war has taken the home of two brothers. Their mother fosters the seed of a new life and tries to shield them from danger. Despite her worries, the boys keep chasing their childhood dream to play music with an instrument they have fallen in love with – a beautiful oud.