Susan Youssef
Habibi, a story of forbidden love, is a fiction feature set in Gaza. Two students in the West Bank are forced to return home to Gaza, where their love defies tradition. To reach his lover, Qays grafittis poetry across town. Habibi is a modern re-telling of the famous ancient Sufi parable Majnun Layla. The full Arabic title is Habibi Rasak Kharban, which translates as “darling, something’s wrong with your head.” Habibi is the first feature film by writer, director, and producer Susan Youssef. She is number 25 on the 100 Most Powerful Arab Women’ list by Arabian Business and has been named one of “25 New Faces” to watch for by Filmmaker Magazine. Her five shorts have screened at venues such as Museum of Modern Art (NY), and have been acquired for distribution by Third World Newsreel, and Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre. Habibi won Best Film, FIPRESCI Prize, Best Actress, and Best Editor at the Dubai International Film Festival in the Arab Muhr Competition. Additionally, it received the Camera Novo, the highest prize at the Cinema Novo Festival, Brugge. Habibi is also the recipient of the Grand Prize in the Emerging Narrative program at IFP’s Independent Film Week and is supported by Co-Producer Dubai Entertainment and Media Organization, Zain, Cinereach, Austin Film Society, Princess Grace Foundation – USA, Fonds BKVB, Rooftop Films, Institute of International Education, Jerome Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, Funding Exchange, A.M. Qattan Foundation, Idioms Film, Panasonic, fiscal sponsor Women Make Movies, Richard Linklater, and many other generous donors. Since Habibi, Susan has made Source for the Tate Modern exhibition of Little Sun. She now makes her next feature Marjoun and the Flying Headscarf. The recipient of a Development Grant from the Doha Film Institute and support from the Emerging Visions program of Lincoln Center and IFP, Marjoun is an extension of Susan’s short film which originally screened at Sundance Film Festival. For more information on Marjoun, write info@marjoun.com. www.youtube.com
A short doc. by Dima Abu Ghoush and Ala’ Abu Ghoush 16 min.
Integral screening: vimeo.com (Documentary starts only after 1 min. on timeline)
A Handful of Earth examines the role played by oral histories in maintaining the bond between Palestinian refugees and the homes from which they were driven in 1948. Taking its title from the handfuls of earth many still keep from their original villages, the film focuses on refugees from the Tirat Haifa area. Sahera Dirbas (Stranger in my Home, 138 Pounds in my Pocket) explores the oral traditions which have spanned generations to sustain the links between exiles living in Jordan, Syria, Israel, and the West Bank, and their shared homes and histories. www.youtube.com
Sameh Zoabi | Palestine | 2012 | 21 min |
In the short film A HANDSOME GROOM, the attractive Ahmad, a childhood friend of director Sameh Zoabi, is still single at 35, quite a problematic situation in a little Palestinian village of northern Israel. As his mother gave up to find him a wife, Sameh takes over.
The filmmaker takes charge of his best friend’s romantic fortunes when his mother gives up trying to find him a wife in a Palestinian village in northern Israel.
From a compilation of four films by Arab filmmakers called Family Albums (2012), Artistic Producer Raed Andoni.
aanvulling 4-9-2014:
HANDSOM GROOM in Australia
HANDSOM GROOM, Sameh Zoabi‘s contribution to the compilation FAMILY ALBUMS, was shown at the Arab Film festival Australia in the cities of Sydney and Canberra. The festival programmed several films dealing with questions of mixed marriages in the Arab Middle East. See Sameh Zoabi in The Point Magazine
Handsome Groom
New York-based Palestinian filmmaker, Sameh Zoabi, returns to his hometown of Iksal, just north of Nazareth in Galilee, in Handsome Groom. He has a mission: to find his childhood friend, Ahmed, 37, a wife.
Ahmed laments a life where he can’t “step out of the norm” and the perennial bachelor wants to meet his wife by “coincidence”. It begs the question: Why didn’t the filmmaker try to find his friend a Jewish wife?
“We’re a segregated community of almost wholly Palestinians. We don’t mix that much… It’s hard to disconnect from the political divide,” Mr Zoabi said from Iksal.
Although some men in Iksal have Jewish wives from a more open era in the 1970s and 1980s, he said, the current climate has created a metaphorical fence that hearts can’t cross.
A 2007 survey of Israeli Jews found that half equated interracial marriage with “national treason”. Education campaigns in schools and vigilante groups have worked against it, while a 2009 government-backed ad campaign to encourage the reporting of interracial affairs was only withdrawn after protests from US Jews.
Ossama Bawardi
Haneen, a woman in her mid 60s lives alone in a Palestinian city, estranged from her husband and son. Haneen, the name itself meaning ‘nostalgia’, waits daily for replies to letters that remain unanswered, living past and present in solitude. On befriending Salem, a boy from the neighborhood whom she finds stealing fruit in her garden, she appears to develop a new spark of life. This allegorical, beautifully shot short is producer Ossama Bawardi’s directorial debut. His previous production credits include Paradise Now, Salt of this Sea, and (No) Laughing Matter. www.youtube.com
Happy Days is a video that exposes everyday Palestinian life under Israeli occupation. In the work, a collage of footage shot on location in the occupied territories is accompanied by the theme music from the seventies sitcom “Happy Days”. Sansour contrasts a visual language which departs from the nowroutinised staples of news footage, with the familiar soundtrack to the mass appeal comedy in order to underline the western public’s apathy when confronted with mediatised conflict. In this way she aims to subject international politics to a format normally associated with entertainment and thereby call attention to the blurry boundary between the two.
Shuha Araaf docu 2006 52 min
Sakhnin, a small Palestinian town inside Israel, produced an edgy, hungry football team that managed, against all odds, to clinch Israel’s national cup in 2004. As the drama of the new football season unfolds the film explores the true reason why the underdog team has attracted such a devoted and fervent following among thousands of Palestinian fans across the country: “Arabs in this country have experienced joy only twice in the past few hundred years: When Saladdin expelled the crusaders from here and when Sakhnin won the cup” claims one of the characters in the film, only halfjokingly. Arraf’s film shows the football pitch to open up a wider arena in the struggle between Palestinians and Jews over land and identity in Israel. Hard Ball becomes an emotional rollercoaster at the intersection of sport and politics as it follows the team’s desperate fight for survival in Israel’s premier league.
Andrew Kavanagh 2009 animatiefilm 7 min.
‘They were young, talented and free in New York. Dorit Rabinyan was an Israeli novelist and Hasan Hourani was a Palestinian artist. Their passionate friendship, impossible at home, flourished abroad. Then, in 2003 while visiting his family, Hourani drowned in Jaffa.’ The narrative style is inspired by Dorit’s 2003 article ‘The Exile’s Return’ ; the animation in part adapted from Hasan’s illustrated children’s book ‘Hasan Everywhere’. In contrasting the lonely voice of the writer with the warm, imaginative landscapes of the artist, the friends find portals of escape from a bitter New York winter to a Levantine dream-world. The story follows the friendship from their first meeting on 8th St. through to Dorit’s departure for Israel. A period of time that spanned six months is summarized thematically, highlights both their longing for home and the dissipation of the perceived differences between them. The film is intercut with a second timeline, featuring Hasan making it through the West Bank Barrier from Palestine to the beach at Jaffa, Israel. Initially, these scenes feel like a memory evoked, but ultimately depict Hasan’s final journey of August 6th 2003. Interwoven between these two timelines are several transitional shots which are pure fantasy, shared dreams of Dorit and Hasan, inspired by his drawings. These episodes segue in and out of the real events taking place in New York and Jaffa. In these scenes, no barrier exists between Dorit and Hasan. There is no divided homeland, only the shared love of the Mediterranean and the sights, tastes and sounds of home. Ultimately, these vignettes and Hasan’s death combine stylistically. In death all divisions cease to exist, and Hasan is immortalized as the dreaming alter-ego he depicts in his drawings. www.youtube.com
Yuval Orr docu 9 min.
JERUSALEM (Ma’an) — The short documentary “Khelil Helwa (Hebron is Beautiful)” follows a young boy from Hebron’s Tel Rumeida neighborhood as he goes about his daily life, uncovering the matrix of Israeli military control that defines every aspect of life in the occupied West Bank.
For Palestinians, the footage may at first appear somewhat unremarkable, and the scenes of soldiers barking orders and even arresting the film’s 15-year-old star, Awni Abu Shamsiya, are heart-breakingly familiar.
But for Israeli-American filmmaker Yuval Orr, it was the hope of showing the footage to Israeli audiences that motivated production.
”I want Israelis to see more films that challenge what they think they know, or challenge the moral stance that is very easy to take at a distance,” he told Ma’an during an interview in West Jerusalem.
”How many Jewish Israelis really go to Hebron if they’re not soldiers or settlers?”
‘Quiet before the storm’
The film, which was produced as part of the ActiveVision film collective, spans a mere nine-and-a-half minutes but manages to offer a complex and insightful look at daily life in central Hebron through the eyes of one of the city’s own children.
”Khelil Helwa” is surprisingly unburdened by statistics, maps, or figures, allowing the potential viewer — particularly if Israeli — to sympathize with Awni’s perspective regardless of their political perspective.
And while Orr concedes that this approach risks depoliticizing the inherently political nature of the struggle facing young Palestinians like Awni, he argues that it also opens up other opportunities for outreach.
”All of the words that we use to describe the ‘conflict,’ the ‘occupation,’ or the ‘situation’ are extraordinarily flawed, and as hard as you try to remain objective with language, its very difficult,” he told Ma’an.
He said he did not want to “color viewers’ perspectives and allow them to shut down, or be primed for a film they are going to identify with.”
Instead, by allowing the viewer to experience Awni’s life directly and without introduction, he said the the film forces them to confront the humanity they share with the teen.
These concerns also motivated Orr’s decisions on which scenes to include in the film. He told Ma’an that he hesitated at times about whether to depict moments of violence that occurred on camera or to instead focus on the many daily struggles and humiliations that characterize the life of young people in central Hebron.
”It was important for me to have those moments of relative calm where you see the soldiers twirling their whistles at the checkpoint or yawning, because so much of life in Hebron is that. It’s these moments of intense quiet before the storm, and then shit gets crazy.”
”In moments of violence it’s very easy to draw the lines, but it’s more difficult in moments of quiet, where you feel the weight of what it’s like to live there. It becomes very difficult to deny the humanity of this kid,” he told Ma’an. “It’s a struggle to walk that line.”
Hebron is ‘extraordinarily uncomfortable’
Although Orr grew up in the United States, he studied Arabic for years in Egypt and Morocco and speaks Hebrew as well. Part of his family traces their roots in Jerusalem back more than 400 years, and he told Ma’an that he comes from a line of rabbis originally from Morocco and Spain.
He admitted that the family’s roots in Palestine are so deep that his grandmother even occasionally admits to considering herself Palestinian, if he “catches her on the right day,” he said, laughing.
For Orr, working on the film was part of his own journey back to Israel to confront his relationship to the occupation and the realities of Zionism.
He told Ma’an that he was drawn to Hebron because of the uniquely difficult situation there.
The process of making the film itself was also full of difficulties and strange experiences, he said, as filming was frequently blocked by Israeli soldiers who forced him to turn off the camera or demanded to know what he was doing.
Once while following Awni’s journey to school, meanwhile, a Palestinian police officer stopped the filming, concerned about a man following a child with a video camera in an area where Jewish settlers frequently stalk and harass locals.
”There’s something about being in Hebron that’s extraordinarily uncomfortable,” he told Ma’an. “I wanted to personally to face that down, and to force other people to face that down as well.”
”Hebron is the worst of the worst, and the kids who grow up in that environment are the most underprivileged, the most oppressed by the system, the ones who feel the occupation on a daily basis the hardest,” he added.
‘A little spark of hope’
Indeed, Hebron is distinguished from other areas in the West Bank by the existence of Jewish settlements inside the city itself. Israeli authorities have shut down hundreds of Palestinian shops in the last few decades and paved the way for the flight of thousands in order to ensure the security of the few hundred Israeli settlers who have taken over parts of the Old City.
One scene in the film tackles one of the most pressing issues facing the area, the system of mass incarceration deployed against local teens by soldiers as punishment for even the most minor offenses.
Awni is seen standing on a street in the neighborhood when stopped by soldiers, who accuse him of having harassed a group of male settlers in their 20s who were walking by. The soldiers then grab him and forcibly take him away, in what was the third such arrest in his life.
Orr told Ma’an that since he finished filming, Awni has been arrested yet again.
Unlike previous times, when he was put away for a few days and then released after his family paid a large fine, this time, Orr said, he is being charged with throwing stones at a checkpoint. Under a new Israeli law, for Palestinians the charge of throwing stones can mean years of hard jail time.
”It’s a terrible situation and a terrible reality,” Orr told Ma’an. “The film shows exactly how harsh it is to live under occupation, but not even, because there are so many things that will happen to him in a day, in a week, in a month, or in a year that are not in the film. He’ll tell me about a 2 am house raid (by Israeli soldiers), but I’m not capturing that on film.”
”I walk away from the film in amazement that Awni and his entire family are able to hold on to their dignity and to their humanity, in a situation that I think most people born into those circumstances would not be able to. For a 15-year-old kid, he’s incredibly wise, incredibly humane, incredibly brave, and those are also things I take away from the film and hope that others will take away as well.”
With Awni potentially facing years in an Israeli military prison, however, it’s unclear whether the qualities that have helped him persevere and which have made him so strong until now, will manage to survive much longer.
”There’s that little spark of hope that’s there,” Orr told Ma’an. “But then you break it.”
Hebron is Beautiful van Yuval Orr (Isr.Am.), docu 9,5 min, 2014 Palestina
Israeli filmmaker explores life through the eyes of Palestinian teenagers.
“Khelil Helwa (Hebron is Beautiful)” follows a young boy from Hebron’s Tel Rumeida neighborhood as he goes about his daily life, uncovering the matrix of Israeli military control that defines every aspect of life in the occupied West Bank. For Palestinians, the footage may at first appear somewhat unremarkable, and the scenes of soldiers barking orders and even arresting the film’s 15-year-old star, Awni Abu Shamsiya, are heart-breakingly familiar.
But for Israeli-American filmmaker Yuval Orr, it was the hope of showing the footage to Israeli audiences that motivated production. Although Orr grew up in the United States, he studied Arabic for years in Egypt and Morocco and speaks Hebrew as well. Part of his family traces their roots in Jerusalem back more than 400 years, and he told Ma’an that he comes from a line of rabbis originally from Morocco and Spain. He admitted that the family’s roots in Palestine are so deep that his grandmother even occasionally admits to considering herself Palestinian, if he “catches her on the right day,” he said, laughing. For Orr, working on the film was part of his own journey back to Israel to confront his relationship to the occupation and the realities of Zionism.
He told Ma’an that he was drawn to Hebron because of the uniquely difficult situation there.
The process of making the film itself was also full of difficulties and strange experiences, he said, as filming was frequently blocked by Israeli soldiers who forced him to turn off the camera or demanded to know what he was doing. Once while following Awni’s journey to school, meanwhile, a Palestinian police officer stopped the filming, concerned about a man following a child with a video camera in an area where Jewish settlers frequently stalk and harass locals. “There’s something about being in Hebron that’s extraordinarily uncomfortable,” he told Ma’an. “I wanted to personally to face that down, and to force other people to face that down as well.” “Hebron is the worst of the worst, and the kids who grow up in that environment are the most underprivileged, the most oppressed by the system, the ones who feel the occupation on a daily basis the hardest,” he added.
Guy Davidi 2014 | Documentary Short | 14 min
Director Guy Davidi (co-director, Emmy award winner and Oscar nominee (5 Broken Cameras) explores the situation of Beduin refugees living near Jerusalem, exposing the reality behind the “high hopes” raised for peace from the days of the Oslo Accords to the recent Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. www.youtube.com
by Berber Verpoest 2017 | Documentary, 24 min
Home paints intimate portraits of three young Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in East Jerusalem: Muna, 18, forcibly shares half of her house with Israeli settlers. Nayef, 26, can’t get a permit for his house and the Israeli authorities have demolished his animals’ barn. For both, merely building a future in East Jerusalem, where Israeli policies aim hard at Judaization, becomes an act of resistance. Omar, 25, has Israeli citizenship and so is free to leave East Jerusalem. He is tired of the occupation and is preparing to move to Jaffa, where prospects appear brighter to him.
Basma Alsharif 2013 docu 23 min.
Despite a decade’s absence, the Gaza Strip is one of the few places that video artist Basma Alsharif feels she can call home. Home Movies Gaza initially gives the impression of a travelogue, relaying the quotidian sights and sounds of a long overdue visit home. But this comfortable tone soon gives way to a more surreal and dystopian aesthetic as the artist finds the notional space of home and domesticity complicated, alienating, and altogether impossible to disentangle from its political woes.
Claire Fowler 2008 docu 32 min.
Beit Iksa is considered the closest West Bank village to Israel, yet it lies between two Israeli settlements that are built on Palestinian land, the separation wall, and is accessed via a checkpoint. The Israelis who reside in both the settlements insist they live in Israeli Jerusalem, yet between them is Beit Iksa, an Arab village situated in occupied Palestine. Home is a portrait of that tiny village, exploring the indignities and contradictions of the Israeli occupation, from the perspective of both Palestinian villager, and Israeli settler.
Nadia Kamel 2007 docu 105 min.
21st century Egypt, is allegedly spurred by the rallying cries of a global “clash of civilizations”. Mary, a grandmother, and her daughter (director, Nadia Kamel) try to give Mary’s grandson, Nabeel, a glimpse into the family’s history of mixed marriages. Like many Egyptians, after a century of immigrations, Nabeel is a mix of Egyptian, Italian, and Palestinian with some Russian, Caucasian, Turkish and Spanish: from his Moslem, Christian and Jewish descendants. As the grandmother recounts the family fairy tales, she confronts her own fears. In an act of solidarity with the Palestinian people dispossessed by the creation of the Jewish state of Israel in 1948, Mary has been boycotting her Egyptian Jewish family in Israel for 55 long years. Inspired by the telling of her own stories she sets about breaking one of the most powerful taboos in modern Egypt. www.youtube.com
Ahmad Saleh 2011 animatiefilm 4 min.
For generations, a family lived in a spacious, beautiful and generous house. The generosity of the house had become part of their life. Guests were always welcome to enjoy a pleasant stay. Until one guest arrived with a different plan in mind… Ahmad Saleh’s House is a meticulously rendered stop motion animated short, with the metaphoric story’s narration provided by Ulrich Fuchs.
Christian Ghazi 197 Fiction 69 min.
Hundred Faces for a Single Day is a radically experimental essay on the perceived decadence and hypocrisy of political and cultural elites in Beirut during the early period of the Palestinian revolutionary project. Directed by Lebanese auteur Christian Ghazi, the film comprises multiple overlapping, discontinuous narrative episodes, ranging in focus from a historical treatment of the Palestinian cause to a disparaging portrait of a misogynist ideologue. Through these interlocking, overlapping storylines, the film celebrates the spirit and sacrifices of the militant masses making up the armed cadre of the revolution itself, while indicting the leadership and elites associated with Beirut’s fashionable bars and cultural salons. Stylistically, the film is notable for its exceptional experimental sound design and for the striking lead performance by Madonna Ghazi.
Zeina Ramadan 2013 7’40”
Lamia is a girl facing social pressures to be a “perfect girl,” which translates into marriage, children, and silence… as if there are no other options for a girl. Anything other than that will lead to scandal and dishonor. The constant criticism of everything she does added to the constant scrutiny in a male dominant society makes things even worse for a girl whose only wish is to have a small quiet room of her own where hope exists. www.youtube.com
Dir. Zain Duraie, fiction Jordan 2013 18 min.
A story that takes us on an emotional journey through the eyes of a troubled yet ambitious mother, wife, and homemaker, Faten, who must stand up to her husband to try and save her children from a future similar to her own.
Winner:
Best of Fest, Audience Choice, Palm Springs International Film Festival 2013
Audience Choice Awards, Short Films competition, Franco-Arab Film Festival, 2103
Interview with Zain Duraie: www.bostonpalestinefilmfest.org
