The quintessential immigrant tale, journey with Muna “a single mother from Palestine“ who travels with her son Fadi to begin a new start in America. Set to the backdrop of the Iraq war, they face the complexities and tribulations of a new life in this heartwarming drama. Official Selection at Sundance Dramatic Competition, Directors Fortnight. Winner- Pipresci Prize at Cannes 2009. www.youtube.com
Prior to embarking on a 27 year underground odyssey in the Middle East with the Japanese Red Army (JRA), filmmaker Masao Adachi (Red Army/PFLP Declaration of World War, 1971) proposed a “landscape theory”, wherein film imageries of scenery and landscape were to represent prevailing systems of political power. Based in Lebanon from the early 1970s, Adachi grew close to JRA founder Fusaku Shigenobu, whose daughter May was born at around this time, growing up in hiding with a mother on the run. May was only able to reveal her identity at the age of 27, following her mother’s capture in 2000. Eric Baudelaire’s film, shot in Super 8 and in the spirit of Adachi’s “landscape theory”, sees him conducting a series of visual and textual exchanges with May Shigenobu and Masao Adachi (living in Tokyo and unable to return to Beirut since his own capture). The resulting work recounts these astonishing personal stories while offering an aesthetically distinctive meditation on the meeting of image, ideology, and memory.
Basel Abbas – Ruanne Abou-Rahme multi-media project
Single screen and 5-channel video projection, 2-channel sound + subwoofer, tools, bricks, boards (2016)5-channel video projection, 2-channel sound + subwoofer, tools, bricks, boards
First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful it pumps my blood with power
Neolithic masks taken from the West Bank and surrounding areas, and stored in private collections are hacked and 3D-printed. Copies circulate in Palestine, eerily akin to a black ski mask. A group of youth wear them at the site of a destroyed Palestinian village in Israel. Becoming other, becoming anonymous, in this accidental moment of ritual and myth. Initiating a series of trips to possess and almost be possessed by these strangely living sites of erasure and wreckage. Only now, returning to the site of destruction as the very site from which to cast a new projection that palpably evokes the potential of an unrealised time, not bound by the here and now or there and then. A parallel time that is not occupied, a virtual time that is not ‘our’ time.
And yet my mask is powerful confronts the apocalyptic imaginary and violence that dominates our contemporary moment, an apocalyptic vision that seems to clog up even the pores in our bodies. Taking Adrienne Rich’s poem ‘Diving into the wreck’ as the beginnings of a script, And yet my mask is powerful asks what happens to people/ place/ things/ materials when a living fabric is destroyed. The project uses the trips taken by young Palestinians to sites of destroyed villages as an avatar to think about the possibility of using the site of wreckage as the very material from which to trace the faint contours of another possible time. Materials are taken from the sites, plants, flowers, stones, bits of human residue. Other objects and things, particularly tools, are cast into the work and projected back into the sites.
In its intersections between performativity and ritual, body and artifact, thingness and virtuality And yet my mask is powerful begins to splice together a counter-mythology to the dominant mythologies of the present. A counter-mythology that holds on to our imaginative space as the last terrain to be occupied. The layers of images, texts, sound and things perform and activate various forms of returns, flashforwards and deja vu unfolding in this gesture a dense story of erasures and reappearances, dispossession and resistance, the archaic resonating in the contemporary.
vimeo.com
by Valerie Malek, docu 60 min, France/Jordan 2017 V
Xena is a young Jordanian architect who designed a renovation project for the largest palestinian refugee camp in Jordan. Beyond politics, it calls for another consciousness, more ethical,. Gradually she opens me the doors of her muslim society. A dialogue of images establishes a relation between her and me, the oriental woman and the occidental one.
Valerie Malek is a French Filmmaker living in Paris. Member of the Society of Authors. “Another world in your eyes” is her fourth documentary feature film. She also works as a visual artist and is the author of many experimental films and documentaries. She has directed a video workshop for young Arabs in Jordan, which has produced many short films selected by international festivals.
An accordion player who left Gaza in 1995 to study music in the West Bank and was not allowed to return finds it difficult to be apart from his family during the Israeli attack on Gaza in 2012.
The right to return of the Palestinian refugees, is at the heart of the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, and will determine the future of the Middle East. Having made the earlier film Aqabat Jaber, Passingthrough (1987) just before the first Intifada, director Eyal Sivan returns to this refugee camp the day after the evacuation of the region by the Israeli army. A few kilometres from Jericho and built 50 years ago, AqabatJaber is today a refugee camp under Palestinian control. Its 3,000 inhabitants have not, however, seen their status change. According to the peace treaty, they are still refugees and cannot go back to the villages from which their parents fled. Can peace between Israel and Palestine be possible without the return of the Palestinian refugees to their homeland, which has now become Israel? Does the return, either physical or symbolic, of people that suffered an injustice in 1948 when the state of Israel was created have to take place? This analogical film tells the story of the Palestinian refugees who, like all refugees, are the deported populations and displaced persons, and are the centre of the great conflicts of our time. www.youtube.com
Oscar-nominated Omar director making film based on life of Arab Idol winner Mohammed Assaf
After conquering the television, Arab Idol winner Mohammed Assaf is set to become a hero on the big screen, with the Palestinian’s remarkable story being made into a feature film by an Oscar-nominated director.
A trailer for the movie was unveiled on Sunday, March 23, on broadcaster MBC’s nightly entertainment show ET Bil Arabi.
The film, shot in Jordan, is directed by Palestinian filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad, whose 2005 filmParadise Now and 2013’s Omar were nominated for Academy Awards.
Judging by the 30 second teaser trailer, the untitled film is set to tug at the heartstrings, with scenes showing a young Assad singing on a makeshift stage in his Gaza neighbourhood.
This is followed by a section in which his parent’s refuse to give him their blessing to pursue his musical dream by becoming a wedding singer.
Then we switch to a slightly older Assad, by this time a popular and in-demand singer in Gaza, as he negotiates a hard bargain with a concert promoter.
The trailer didn’t show any scenes of his struggle to compete in Arab Idol in 2013 or his triumph on the show no doubt to fuel rumours on who will play the judges, particularly the Egyptian starlet Nancy Ajram and fiery Emirati diva Ahlam.
Representatives from MBC and Mohammed Assaf were not available for comment. The film’s title and release date has yet to be announced. www.youtube.com
Director: Shay Kapun Fiction Israel 2012 48 minutes
The wildly popular, irreverent and acclaimed series by author Sayed Kashua, is back with a third hilariously entertaining season. Tune in for Amjad and his family’s adventures as they make constant efforts to fit in after relocating from their Arab village to the heart of Jerusalem. www.youtube.com
Eyal Sagui Bizawe en Sara Tsifroni, documentaire / 2015 / 60 minuten
Volgens zijn zoon Assi wilde zelfs de bekende Israëlische staatsman Moshe Dayan niet gestoord worden tijdens de wekelijkse, Arabische film op vrijdagmiddag op de Israëlische televisie. Zo populair was die intens dramatische en emotionele film. Hele families verzamelden zich ervoor om de televisie: Israëlische arabieren voor wie Arabisch de omgangstaal was, Sefardische Joden die weemoedig aan hun land van oorsprong dachten en ook veel Ashkenazische Joden. Het werd een ritueel waar mensen nog steeds nostalgisch over praten.
Regisseur Eyal Sagui Bizawe, zelf van Egyptisch/Joodse komaf, analyseert samen met Sara Tsifroni de liefde voor die Arabische film in Arabic Movie (Seret Aravi). Hij laat bijvoorbeeld familieleden aan het woord met heldere herinneringen aan moederland Egypte. In een tijd dat Israël en Egypte nog gezworen vijanden waren, aanbaden kijkers aan twee kanten van de grens dezelfde Arabische helden op het witte doek.
Director: Adi Adwan Israel 2013 Fiction 82 minutes ArabicHebr
dir. Nada El-Yassir, Fiction, 13’, Beta SP (Palestine, 2001).
Every day is a bad-news day in a tiny place in this world called Palestine. Death has become very much part of daily life on the West Bank and Gaza. A Palestinian woman goes through the daily routines of eating, drinking, and feeding her son while the news of the conflict permeates her mundane chores.
Arna Mer Khamis was a legendary Israeli activist against the occupation. Born Jewish, she married a Palestinian and spent her life campaigning for human rights. In the Jenin refugee camp, Arna opened a theatre where, with her son Juliano, she taught children to express themselves through art. When Arna died of cancer in 1995, the theater ultimately did not survive. Five years later, Juliano, one of the region’s leading actors, returns to discover what happened to ‘Arna’s Children.’ Shifting in time, his film juxtaposes the young boys with the militants and martyrs they become, exposing the horror of young lives trapped by the circumstances of Israeli occupation. Winner: Best Documentary Feature – Tribeca Film Festival, 2004. Winner: Best First Documentary Feature ¬– Canadian International Documentary Festival, 2004. www.youtube.com
A journey with four young filmmakers in a blue Fiat Uno as they make their way from Jenin to Ramallah to have their favourite pizza… Broadcast as part of Channel 4’s “Three Minute Wonder” series, Around documents much more than just a journey to a pizza restaurant, it follows a trip around or through more than 500 Israeli checkpoints, taking 12 hours, and necessitating going “around” – in doing so discovering hidden stories and curious people.
On August 21st 1969 a fire broke out in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Jerusalem. The fire did untold damage and much controversy surrounds the motivation of the arsonist who caused it as well as the efforts of Israeli authorities to extinguish it. Hamdan’s documentary discusses the most important activities involved in the subsequent restoration of the mosque and the rescue and protection of its valuable manuscripts. Through eyewitness accounts, the historical importance of the mosque and Israel’s reaction to the fire of 1969 is explored.
Jessica Habie
“Art and Apathy” features several of Israel and Palestines most respected artists, as well as a diverse range of underground voices.
“Art and Apathy” is a film project that documents the complexity of life in Israel and Palestine as experienced by local artists. Despite the unending cycles of ideological and physical violence propagated by the mainstream media and politicians, the artists featured in our films choose to produce work that provokes dialogue. Through their eyes our film examines several political and social elements that are often oversimplified in international media. Defining terms such as the green line, the right to return, Palestine 48, Intifada, Zionism and other key concepts, we present audiences with the political ideologies and historic identities that structure life in the Middle East. Focusing on artists who’s work inspire alternative persepctives, we venture into intimate spaces and access visionary voices who have transcended the political rhetoric.
by Raja Kanaan, docu 6 min. 2017. Producer:
Oline Paludan Jørgensen and support Filmlab
An insight into an artist’s life and how he uses the walls and ruins of his city to express himself artistically.
Director: Charlotte Cornic UK 2007 docu 11 min.
What links Arthur J Balfour, the British Politician born in 1848 on a sumptuous family estate in East Lothian and Fatima, a young Palestinian woman, born in 1971 in a refugee camp in Lebanon and now seeking asylum in Glasgow? From the narrow alley ways of a refugee camp in Lebanon to the beautiful farming landscape of East Lothian in Scotland, ‘Arthur Balfour and Me’ is a visual and emotional journey through history and the present, a personal story about how one politician’s actions continue to affect the life of a young woman from the Middle East.
online:
www.cultureunplugged.com
