Annemarie Jacir

A Post Oslo History

 

ABOUT THE FILM

A moment at the Bethlehem checkpoint, five years after the signing of the Oslo Accords, tracing the futility of the "peace" accords, as restrictions of Palestinian freedom of movement remain stagnant. The quiet right before a storm, a dream deferred.

 
 
 
 

Annemarie Jacir -- experimental, 8’, Arabic (USA: 2001)

Like Twenty Impossibles (Ka'inna 'Ashrun Mustaheel)

 

ABOUT THE FILM

In a landscape now interrupted by military checkpoints, a group of Palestinian filmmakers attempt to reach Jerusalem. When they decide to avoid a closed checkpoint by taking an unused side road, the landscape unravels, and the passengers are slowly taken apart by the mundane brutality of military occupation. “like twenty impossibles” is both a visual poem and a narrative, questioning the space between fiction and reality, and the politics of art and resistance.

 
 
 
 

Annemarie Jacir -- 17’ (Palestine/USA: 2003)

Palestine is Waiting

 

ABOUT THE FILM

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)

Salt of this Sea (Milh Hadha al-Bahr)

 

ABOUT THE FILM

Soraya, born in Brooklyn in a working class community of Palestinian refugees, discovers that her grandfather's savings were frozen in a bank account in Jaffa when he was exiled in 1948. Direct, stubborn, and determined to reclaim what is hers, she fulfills her life-long dream of "returning" to Palestine. Slowly she is taken apart by the reality around her and is forced to confront her own anger. She meets Emad, a young Palestinian whose ambition, contrary to hers, is to leave forever. Tired of the constraints that dictate their lives, they know in order to be free, they must take things into their own hands, even if it's illegal.

 
 
 

 

Annemarie Jacir -- 109’, Arabic/English/Hebrew (Palestine/Belgium/France/Spain/Switzerland: 2008)

The Satellite Shooters

 

ABOUT THE FILM

Using the conventions of the Western genre, "The Satellite Shooters" satirically tells the story of Tawfiq, a young Palestinian boy in Texas trying to find his place in America, and The Kid, a local gunslinger. The film is a critique of the imagination that the Western arises from -- that fantasy land wherein masculine idealizations and racial hierarchies lead to the prevailing cowboy hero and his stunted sidekick.

 
 
 
 

Annemarie Jacir -- 16’, English/Arabic with English Subtitles (USA/Palestine: 2001)