Cinema Palestina 20

Cinema Palestina (n)
Naila and the uprising

Julia Bacha Palestijnse Gebieden, Verenigde Staten 2017 75 min

Persoonlijk portret van Palestijns verzetsleider Naila Ayesh, die met een ondergronds netwerk van vrouwen vooropliep in het burgerverzet tijdens de eerste intifada in 1987. Hun niet-gewelddadige acties en betogingen voor onafhankelijkheid van Israël brachten voor het eerst wereldwijde aandacht voor de Palestijnse zaak. Ayesh benadrukte daarbij altijd dat twee volken op één terrein in elk geval gelijke rechten moesten hebben – en niet dat de een de ander onderdrukt. Archiefmateriaal over de intifada en oudere nieuwsfragmenten met Ayesh worden afgewisseld met privébeelden van haar gezinsleven die weergeven welke tol zij moest betalen om haar politieke strijd voort te zetten. Sober getekende animaties begeleiden de meer dramatische episodes. Dat het vooral vrouwen waren die zo’n grote rol hebben gespeeld bij het Palestijns verzet lijkt gauw vergeten, vinden veel van de geïnterviewde betrokkenen. Zij kijken terug op de gebeurtenissen die uiteindelijk leidden tot vredesbesprekingen in Oslo – al gebeurde dat niet zonder slag of stoot, getuige de buitensporig gewelddadige arrestaties, intimidaties en martelingen van Ayesh en haar medestrijders.
www.youtube.com

Naim and Wadee’a

Najwa Najjar 1999 docu 23 min.

This documentary by director Najwa Najjar (Yasmine’s Song) returns to Yaffa (Jaffa) and to before 1948 by way of a portrait of the filmmaker’s grandparents Wadee’a Aghabi and Naim Azar. Using the oral histories recounted by the three daughters of Naim and Wadee’a to tell the story of Jaffa’s social life, Najjar builds a compelling account of life before the Nakba in a prosperous urban centre. Visually striking, the film’s use of archive photographs and mementos of the city and the couple through which its story is told make it an intimate and captivating journey into the life of one couple, and one city, before the Nakba. vimeo.com
Winner Hamptons International Film Festival, USA (2000)
Winner Movimiento de Documentalistas, Argentina (2002)

Naji el Ali: an artist with vision

Kasim Abid 1999 docu 60 min.

The 1987 assassination in London of the legendary Palestinian political cartoonist and satirist, Naji el Ali remains an unsolved crime. But this powerful documentary supplies clues as to his killers through a detailed and informative examination of his prolific life’s work. Shot in Lebanon, Palestine and London, the film draws on archive footage of el Ali, as well as interviews with his widow Widad and several of the many Arab poets, activists and artists whom el Ali befriended. This is a rare insight into one of the icons of the Palestinian political left and arguably one of the most important political artists in modern history. www.youtube.com

The Nakba archive (selections)

Diana Allan, Zeidan Mahmoud 3007 docu 120 min.

Since 2002, the Nakba Archive has recorded over 450 eyewitness testimonies with Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon. This screening consists of a selection of interviews taken from this growing resource. The collection of interviews reconstructs through personal memories the social, cultural and political life in Palestine prior to 1948, and documents the events that led up to the expulsions. These powerful materials combine to offer a unique audiovisual record for scholars, researchers, and campaigners working in this field, as well as a historical and political resource for future generations of Palestinians. The archive gives voices to individual histories and stands as a public act of witness to the continuing legacy of 1948.

AL NAKBA: The Palestinian Catastrophe 1948

Benny Brunner docu 58 min 1997
AL NAKBA: The Palestinian Catastrophe 1948 (58 min. documentary, Israel-Germany-The Netherlands, 1997). Arguably the first film that seriously tackles the historical events that lead to the creation of 750.000 Palestinian refugees at the end of the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948. Based on historian Benny Morris’ book “The birth of the Palestinian refugee problem, 1947-49”.
Produced and directed for ARTE by Benny Brunner & Alexandra Jansse. 
Photography: Ram Lital. 
Editor: Joseph Rochlitz. 
Original music composed & performed by: Elizabeth & Ilya Magnes.
Broadcast: Europe. Screened at the cinematheques of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in March-April 1998 and in numerous film festivals.
Integraal te zien op: vimeo.com

Nakba: Palestine, 1948

Ruyuichi Hirokawa 2008 docu 131 min.

Director Ryuichi Hirokawa is a leading photojournalist, with a body of award winning work from Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan. But his journey into photography, into conflict areas, and into political activism, is one intimately related to his encounters with Palestinian history. Hirokawa travelled to Israel in 1967 to work on a kibbutz. One day he found rubble at the edge of the kibbutz that later proved to be the remains of a Palestinian village. His journey to find out what had happened to the village started then so too, his involvement with socialist activism, as well as his career as an investigative journalist and photographer. In the years and decades that followed, Hirokawa continued to follow the Palestinian exile into its darkest hour (covering the massacres at Sabra and Shatilla in 1982), and to the present day, continuing to amass evidence, testimonies, images, and artefacts from the Nakba and covering the consequences of enduring dispossession. This incredible film, masterfully assembled from hundreds of hours of documentation traces this personal, political, national, and visual history, bringing the past and the present together in an original and compelling way. The screening of NAKBA: Palestine, 1948 in the 2009 London Palestine Film Festival is the UK Premier and will be followed by a panel discussion and Q&A with director Ryuichi Hirokawa and the preeminent scholars of Palestinian history, Ilan Pappe and Karma Nabulsi. Hirokawa’s visit is also celebrated with an exhibition drawn from his work over the last three decades (from Lebanon 1982 to Gaza 2009) which he has selected specially for the Palestine Film Festival.

NAMRUD (Troublemaker)

Fernando Romero Forsthuber – docu – 94 min. – Austria 2017

Dutch première: a film about a vegan rebel from Nazareth. Followed by Q&A with the Nazarene.

Still from NAMRUD (Troublemaker)
Palestinian Jowan Safadi is a famous free-spirit and singer songwriter in Israel and the Middle-East. The son of a carpenter from Nazareth, he is a rebel and prominent social conscious. The Arab Spring did not produce new political parties, it is a real cultural revolution and he is at its core. Jowan’s lyrics, at once penetrating and witty, have also courted controversy on several occasions: previously investigated for nearly three years in Israel for “inciting terrorism”, his last tour to Jordan ended with his arrest and an overnight stay in a prison cell. Jowan sings about the love of his she-dog, about sex, race/ism, refugees, religion and power-politics with near Haiku type lyrics and humour.
The Arab Spring is still alive
He performs in Berlin, Cairo, Oslo, Amman, Helsinki, Brussels, Tel-Aviv and naturally Nazareth. Jowan tackles taboos in a gentle and near philosophical way, both in ‘western’ and ‘eastern’ worlds. Jowan is also a single dad to 15-year-old son Don who lived in the US. The friendly and aggressive verbal exchanges between father and son shape this film. In addition to social questions, he is confronted with parenting in a confused and violent region. How do you balance between the pressure to adapt and a conscious needing rebellion?What does it mean to be a man in today’s world? A Palestinian? An Israeli? A single dad, a teen-ager, an artist, a vegan or Muslim? Mainly, what does it take to be human in today’s world? Thought provoking, beautiful, funny, touching and a fresh insight on the cultural revolution that has not died in the Middle East.
English subtitles. Language: Arabic, English, Hebrew
Original Title: Namrud (Troublemaker)
Length: 94 minutes
Release date: November 3, 2017, Austria
Director: Fernando Romero Forsthuber
Dutch première vimeo.com

Nation Estate

Larissa Sansour 2012 fiction 9 min.

Nation Estate van Larissa Sansour (9 min). Science fiction, 2012. Offers a clinically dystopian, yet humorous approach to the deadlock in the ‘Middle East conflict’. The film explores a vertical solution to Palestinian statehood: One colossal skyscraper housing the entire Palestinian population – now finally living the high life. www.youtube.com

Native Sons: Palestinians In Exile

Tom Hayes 1985 docu 57 min. 1985.
Trailer: 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.”

Neither here nor there

Hicham Kayad 2006 docu 45 min.

Starting with the theme of the Palestinian experience in the camps of Lebanon, this group project conducted under the auspices of the AlJana centre and under the technical supervision of Hicham Kayad, sees young Palestinians participate in the production of a unique study of the relationships between youth, economic hardship and dreams of emigration (primarily to Europe). Featuring firsthand accounts from young Palestinian refugees who have left and returned, or who plan to emigrate, this is a valuable portrayal of the aspirations and frustrations that influence the lives of thousands of young refugees in Lebanon.

Nevertheless Al Quds

by Unai Aranzadi, docu met animatie 30 min. made for Mundubat Foundation. Palestine/Israel, 2016. V

Since 1967, nothing seems to stop the israeli occupation of East Jerusalem. However, nothing stops the dignity and strength of the occupied Palestinian population.

Trailer: www.youtube.com

THE NIGHT

by Mohamad Malas, Syria 1992, docu 116 min.

In the framework of the program on 50 years of the occupation of 1967 is showing Mohamd Malas‘ classic The Night (al-Leil).
Content
In the destroyed city of Quneitra is the grave of a resistance fighter for Palestine. His son, the director, tries to restore the dead man’s history by mixing echoes of his mother’s memory and his desire to give his father a more honorable death. Through the daily lives, dreams, fears and hopes of its citizens, Malas chronicles his hometown Quneitra in the Golan Heights between 1936, the year of the first revolts against the British and Zionists in Palestine untill the year of the city’s destruction. He seeks to exorcise a feeling of shame and humiliation that long accompanied the image of his father and also his town, occupied by Israelis in 1967.
 
mec film is serving as agent to the films of renown Syrian film-maker Mohamad Malas. Together with Dunia Film in Damascus we make copies available or connect you to the distributor for your territory. Mohamad Malas’ Œuvre, short and feature length, documentary and fiction, forms a deep chronicle of Syria in the 20th and early 21st century. We are happy to help organizing retrospectives of Mohamad Malas’ work.
 www.youtube.com

Nine star hotel
(officiële titel: 9 star hotel)

Ido Haar 2006 docu 78 min.

In the West Bank, thousands of Palestinians are compelled by economic necessity to work illegally as construction labourers, building Israel’s settlements and cities. After an arduous and dangerous journey, loaded with blankets and bags, they cross the hills to the places where they can find employment. At night they sleep on the hillcrests in improvised huts and coffinlike sleeping cubicles, a stark contrast to the luxury apartment complexes they build by day. But they have made homes for themselves, complete with pillows and even power generated by batteries they’ve scraped together. In 9 Star Hotel, the filmmakers follow coworkers Ahmed and Muhammad they share food, belongings and stories, and live under the constant threat of arrest police, soldiers and the secret service are all tirelessly on the alert for illegal workers. www.youtube.com

No Exit (La Mafar)

Mohanad Yaqubi. Fictie 11 min, Palestina 2014, Arab. gesproken en Engels ondertiteld
Like many people of his generation, Ali has decided to run away from the hardships of war. Along his way, he meets a strange person in a bus station: an encounter that will change his perspective…
“At first, Mohanad Yaqubi’s No Exit appears to be set on a London Underground platform; but the time and place in which this enigmatic film’s protagonists seem trapped is actually far from certain…” Palestine Film Foundation  vimeo.com

No laughing matter
officiële titel: (no) laughing matter

Vanessa Rousselot 2010 docu 55 min.

Convinced that humor knows no frontiers, filmmaker Vanessa Rousselot embarks on an unusual quest: to search for humor in the West Bank. At first she finds only disillusionment (“our whole situation is a joke”). But gradually, Rousselot reveals a vibrant culture of humor. From stories mocking the residents of Hebron (the classic butts of Palestinian jokes) to self deprecating political quips and bittersweet anecdotes about the absurdity of everyday life, the film plunges audiences deep into this peculiar comedic universe, a place where hope and humanity thrive in the shadow of conflict.

No News

Eyas Salman 2011 fiction 7 min.

Produced by Hany Abu Assad (Paradise Now, Ford Transit), Eyas Salman’s short ghost story No News offers an orginal take on the enduring consequences of the Nakba. In an abandoned cemetery, a woman rises from her grave to find herself surrounded by strangers and met with awkward silence. Confronted with questions about time, place, and times long past… this spectral presence comes to realize that nothing has changed in some 60 years, and that nothing can go back to the way it was before…

No way through

Alexandra Munro 2009 fiction 7 min.

No Way Through brings the reality of life under military occupation uncomfortably close to home. The city of London is subjected to military rule. To get to school, go to work, visit friends or reach a hospital, it is necessary to navigate a matrix of checkpoints and soldiers. Winner of 2009’s “Ctrl+Alt+Shift” Film Competition, No Way Through is activist cinema at its best. It addresses universal issues of injustice by bringing the specifics of the occupation of Palestine into a world that could be all of ours.

Not in my garden

Video ’48 Collective 2000 docu 50 min.

The Palestinian Galilee village of Ramia, one of many unrecognised Palestinian villages in the state of Israel, has been entirely engulfed by the Jewish Israeli town of Carmiel, established upon the village’s land in 1964. This film, by the Palestinian Israeli socialist/activist Video ’48 Collective, chronicles the efforts of the authorities to deny the existence of the village, refusing its population municipal services as part of an attempt to drive them from their home. The film also represents a testimony to the ongoing resistance of the people of Ramia and their refusal to be complicit in their eradication.

Notre musique

Jean-Luc Godard 2004 fiction 80 min.

Part poetry, part journalism, part philosophy, Jean-Luc Godard’s Notre Musique is a timeless meditation on war as seen through the prisms of cinema, text and image. Largely set at a literary conference in Sarajevo, the film draws on the conflagration of the Bosnian war, but also draws on the Israel Palestine conflict, the brutal treatment of Native Americans, and the legacy of the Nazis. Notre Musique is structured via three Dantean Kingdoms: “Hell,” “Purgatory” and “Heaven.” In the film, reallife literary figures (including Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish and Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo) intermingle with actors and documentary meshes with fiction. Through evocative language and images, Godard explores a series of conflicting forces: death life dark light real imaginary vanquished victor shot reverse shot. These opposing movements make up “our music.” Winner – FRIPESCI Film of the Year Award, San Sebastián International Film Festival, 2004. Winner – Best Film Swiss Film Prize, 2005.  www.youtube.com

Nowhere Left to Go

Angela Godfrey Goldstone     documentary    28 min.

Full documentary: vimeo.com
Posted by A Mosaic For Peace in Uncategorized February 25, 2013

“Nowhere Left to Go” is a film documenting the story of the Jahalin Bedouin, a group of Bedouin people who were displaced from their traditional lands in the Negev desert in 1951.  At that time, two elements of the Israeli Army (the Haganah and the Stern Gang) attacked the Bedouin people living in the Arad area of the Negev, killing 5 men and burning 15 tents.  The people fled the Negev with their sheep and goats, settling in the hills to the east of Jerusalem.  For 60 years, the Bedouin have lived a traditional life, living off the fruits of this land and garnering income from their sheep.  Seasonally, they would move their tents to new ground, moving to a cooler place close to water in the summer and to a warmer place in winter.  Since the 1967 Israeli military occupation began, they have faced increasing hardship as their land has been taken from them for settlement construction and grazing access for their livestock has been increasingly denied.  In most cases, they have been denied access to basic services such as water, electricity and sewage, even though the water, electrical and sewage infrastructure for nearby settlements passes through their land.  The building of the Separation Barrier and the Checkpoint and permit system has denied them access to the city of Jerusalem, their primary market to sell their produce.  They are unable to obtain work permits to work in Jerusalem, and since the building of a village school in 2009, they have been denied work permits to work on nearby settlements.

Nun wa Zaytun

Emtiaz Diab docu 2014 50 minutes

Press and cinema cameras shoot the Palestinian, like more bullets in her wounded body. Few are the Palestinian films that seek to portray the Palestinians as people who have a right to life without stereotyping them as heroes or martyrs. As if it is wrong that the owners of the stolen land should feel defeat. As if they should be ashamed to feel death, though every breath they take is full of fear and oppression. ‘Nun wa Zaytun’ follows the journeys of Murad as he screens forgotten Palestinian films. This young man who tours the occupied West Bank in his green minivan and gathers the people to watch the films in village squares doesn’t expect any great material gains. He just plays his role of “happiness giver” for these people in their fleeting moments between one concern and the next. The occupation in the film is peripheral or in the background, though it remains a terrifying nightmare that Palestinians dream of being rid of so they can exercise their right, as other peoples, to live and love and exalt without fear or guilt or shame.
There are no mobs in ‘Nun wa Zaytun’, no demonstrations, no shouting and no heroism. You won’t find here the usual film about the torturer and the victim, nor about oppression and liberty. This is a sad song for the people who in Mahmoud Darwish immortal words, “besiege their siege” through dreaming and through planting their limbs deep in the land, learning from the blessed and ancient olive tree roots. In the last months of 2012, the camera’s eye captured scenes from Yanun, Aqabat Jabr, Jala, Beit Mirsem, Bethlehem and Massha, met the kind and generous people of these villages, and roved around the West Bank reveling in its stunning natural beauty and wildlife. www.youtube.com
(Vertoond bij het Palestinian film Festival Amsterdam 2015)

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