A brief introduction to some of the main issues associated with the Palestinian Right to Return and why it is a key issue in forging a just peace in the Middle East made by a collective of Palestinian filmmakers based in the United States.
Falafel Daddy Productions -- 10’ (United States: 2001)
This extraordinary record of Palestine from 1917 to 1974, with its compelling and irrefutable archival footage, still stands as a major filmic testament to the complex modern history of Palestine.
Kais Al-Zubaidi lives in Berlin and works as a director and editor. He has worked in film in both Europe and the Arab world.
Kais al-Zubaidi -- 110', Arabic (Palestine: 1984)
“Shababik Falastiniyah” comprises five short films made by young Palestinian directors. Each chose his/her window to show part of daily life in Palestine during the long siege of the West Bank and Gaza.
Ala’ Abu-Ghoush, Ahmad Habash, Esmail Habbash, Dima Abu-Ghoush & Mohammad Jaber -- 10' (Palestine: 2002)
Paradise Now is the story of two young Palestinian men as they embark upon what may be the last 48 hours of their lives. On a typical day in the West Bank city of Nablus , where daily life grinds on amidst crushing poverty and the occasional rocket blast, we meet two childhood best friends, Saïd (Kais Nashef) and Khaled (Ali Suliman), who pass time drinking tea, smoking a hookah, and working dead-end menial jobs as auto mechanics.
Saïd's day takes a turn for the better when a beautiful young woman named Suha (Lubna Azabal) brings her car in for repairs. From their spirited interaction, it is apparent that there is a budding romance growing between them.
Saïd is approached by middle-aged Jamal (Amer Hlehel), a point man for an unnamed Palestinian organization , who informs Saïd that he and Khaled have been chosen to carry out a strike in Tel Aviv. They have been chosen for this mission as a team, because each had ex press ed a wish that if either is to die a martyr, the other would want to die alongside his best friend.
Saïd and Khaled have been preparing for this moment for most of their lives. They spend a last night at home -- although they must keep their impending mission secret even from their families. During the night Saïd sneaks off to see Suha one last time. Suha's moderate views, having been educated in Europe, and Saïd's burgeoning conflicted conscience cause him to stop short of explaining why he has come to say good-bye.
The following day, Saïd and Khaled are lead to a hole in the fence that surrounds Nablus, where they are to meet a driver who will take them to Tel Aviv. But here the plan goes wrong, and Saïd and Khaled are separated.
Born in Nazareth in 1961, Abu-Assad studied and worked as an airplane engineer in The Netherlands for several years, before entering the world of cinema and television as a producer.
Hany Abu-Assad -- 90’, Arabic/English (Palestine/Germany/France/Netherlands/Israel: 2005)
A portrait of Paul Gautier, a young priest who studied theology in the Dijon seminary in France. In 1957, he decided to go to live in the Holy Land, to live with the people. Based in Nazareth, his conscience opened to the drama of the Palestinian people, and so began a construction project to give back to them what he could.
Ibrahim Khill -- 52' (Palestine/France: 1999)
Born in Nazareth in 1961, Abu-Assad studied and worked as an airplane engineer in The Netherlands for several years, before entering the world of cinema and television as a producer.
Hany Abu-Assad -- 90’, Arabic/English (Palestine/Germany/France/Netherlands/Israel: 2005)
Jackie Salloum -- (United States: 2005)
Ramallah this decade. A free spirited woman dancer, Kamar, finds herself the wife of a prisoner, Zaid, and away from everything she loves until she returns to the dance, defying society's taboos. At the dance Kamar is confronted with Kais, a Palestinian returnee, who has taken Kamar's role as the head choreographer. Sparks fly between Kamar and Kais, creating more than a passionate, emotional dance for the both of them. Matters become even more complicated when Zaid's sentence is extended. At the same time the family's legal case against the land confiscation faces one obstacle after another and the villagers from the nearby villages are unable to reach the family's olive groves, placing the annual harvest and consequently the family's livelihood in danger. And Kamar's life is thrown into turmoil as she becomes increasingly attached to Kais, and caught in the midst of her desire to dance and breaking the family and society taboos of the prisoner's wife's role while life under occupation rages on.
Writer/ Director Najwa Najjar received her BA in Political Science and Economics, and MA in Film and Video production from the US. She has worked in both documentary and fiction since 1999. She has reviewed books for acclaimed journals, and her articles on Palestinian cinema have been published in both local and international newspapers. She lives in Palestine.
Najwa Najjar -- 95’, Arabic/English/Hebrew (Palestine: 2008)
The history of the town of Jaffa, a thriving port city now part of Tel Aviv, provides the background for Aljafari’s most recent film, centering on his mother’s family at risk of eviction if they can’t find proof that the house they have lived in for decades belongs to them. Their predicament is rendered with Aljafari’s usual subtlety, as well as deadpan humor and dark wit. This skeletal narrative provides the scaffolding for a portrait of life in what was once a bustling neighborhood that was nearly emptied by fighting during the establishment of the state of Israel, and then suffered decades of official neglect. In the meantime, Jaffa was often used as a location for action adventure movies featuring the likes of Chuck Norris. While these films used the city as a generically exotic location, they have now become, in a neat bit of irony, the source of documentary images of the city as it was.
Kamal Aljafari is an internationally recognized filmmaker whose work searches for home while also questioning the boundaries between “documentary” and “fiction.” Blending a potent mix of personal ethics, transnational politics, and video and film aesthetics, Aljafari reinvents the long take, the slow tracking shot through space, and widescreen mise-en scene-once keynotes of European art cinema-in films where time and place take precedence over story and character. Aljafari’s films represent a new kind of domestic ethnography-“home movies” in which his family members come to represent all who wait, survivors of a decimated nation, forever looking for what has vanished, confined to an ever eroding domestic orbit, in a war with no end in sight.
Kamal Aljafari -- 62’, Arabic/Hebrew with English subtitles (Germany/France/UAE: 2009)
