Global Coverage

 

ABOUT THE FILM

British comedian and columnist Jeremy Hardy makes a rash decision to travel to Palestine in March 2002 just before the invasion of Bethlehem and the siege of the Nativity Church. He travels there to join a campaign to protect Palestinian farmers against the hostility of settlers but finds himself caught up in the events of the invasion. In the summer of 2002, Jeremy he decides to go back again, but this time, in a manner of speaking, to take on the Israeli army.

 
 
DOAN | Filmmakers 2
Leila Sansour
Leila Sansour

Leila Sansour is the founder and CEO of Open Bethlehem. She was born in Moscow to a Palestinian father and a Russian mother and grew up in the occupied West Bank. Leila Sansour studied at the Sorbonne, Paris, at Moscow State University and at Warwick University in the UK. She holds a Masters degree in philosophy.

 
 

Leila Sansour -- Documentary, 6’ (Palestine/UK: 2002)

God Forbid!

 

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The reality of life in the refugee camps blocks the dreams of children and becomes a nightmare for Halim. He is thinking of leaving school to support his family, while his friends spend the vacation acting as fortune-tellers.

 
 
DOAN | Filmmakers
Hicham Kayed
Hicham Kayed

Hicham Kayed is a 2008 Joiner Fellow. A Palestinian living in Lebanon, he is the director of The Arab Resource Center for Popular Arts, organizations which work conducting writing and film workshops for Palestinian youth living in the refugee camps in Lebanon. He is the multimedia coordinator of AL-JANA, the Arab Resource Center for Popular Arts in Beirut.

 

 

Hicham Kayed -- 26' (Lebanon: 2001)

Going Home (Al-'Aouda)

 

ABOUT THE FILM

In late 1947, Palestine is a country in the throes of war between Palestine's Arabs and Jews. The British government is officially responsible for maintaining law and order but it quickly loses control and decides to abandon the country on May 15th 1948, leaving behind a war which was to lead to the tragic dispossession of over three quarter million Palestinian Arabs of their homes and the creation of the state of Israel.

One man, Major Derek Cooper, witnessed those final days of the Mandate as an officer in the British army responsible for the protection of the Arab city of Jaffa . His experiences there marked him so deeply that he continued to work on behalf of Palestine's refugees for most of his life. The film tells the story of his return to Palestine/Israel in the summer of 1995.

 
 
DOAN | Filmmakers
Omar Al-Qattan
Omar Al-Qattan

Omar Al-Qattan is a Palestinian-British director, producer and writer. Born in Beirut in 1964, he has worked in film since 1991. His film credits include, among others, Dreams and Silence (1991), a 52 minute documentary shot during the weeks preceding the Gulf War, portraying a Palestinian woman refugee in Jordan and her struggles with the religious and social constraints around her at a time of great tension and anguish. The film, one of the first to tackle the theme of political Islam, won the Joris Ivens Award.

 
 

Omar Al-Qattan -- 50’, English/Arabic with French and English subtitles (Palestine/UK: 1996)

The Green Bird (Al-Tir Al-Akhdhar)

 

ABOUT THE FILM

"To make this film, I didn't look far -- I met the everyday children in my street and neighborhood. I wanted to find a space where they could express their dreams. It is in the imagination that children struggle against the extermination that threatens their people."

 
 
DOAN | Filmmakers
Liana Badr
Liana Badr

Liana Badr was born in 1950 in Jerusalem to a nationalist family, and was raised in Jericho. She obtained a BA in philosophy and psychology from the Beirut Arab University. After the 1982 Palestinian exodus from Lebanon, she lived in Damascus, Tunis, Amman, and returned to Palestine in 1994.

 
 

Liana Badr -- 39', Arabic (Palestine: 2002)

Growing Up in Amman’s Suburbia

 

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Filmmaker breaks form to tell a story of how children in Jordan's sprawling suburbs coup with the facts of life.

 
 
DOAN | Filmmakers
Hazim Bitar
Hazim Bitar

Hazim Bitar is a Palestinian-Jordanian producer, writer, and director. He founded the Amman Filmmakers Cooperative, which serves as the launching pad for some of Jordan's leading independent filmmakers. Since its founding, the Amman Filmmakers Cooperative has provided cinema education to hundreds of Jordanians and Palestinians, mainly in disadvantaged areas.

 
 

Hazim Bitar -- 9’, Arabic (Jordan: 2006)

Haifa

 

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Though he lives in Gaza, his name is Haifa and he dreams of returning to the city of the same name. He may be the local fool, but he sees and understands much about the hopes and aspirations of his Gaza relatives: Abu Said hopes for an improvement in the political situation, since it means the release of his eldest son from prison. His wife already has her eye on a bride for the boy. A younger son, cynical and rebellious, believes in nothing, while their 12-year-old daughter is a romantic, dreaming of the future's largesse.

 
 
 
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Rashid Masharawi
Rashid Masharawi

Rashid Masharawi was born and raised in Shati refugee camp, Gaza Strip. He is a self-taught filmmaker, beginning to work at eighteen in the cinema industry and acquiring skills on over twenty films before starting himself to write and direct his own. Masharawi’s films portray his knowledge of living under the Israeli Occupation in refugee camps, the new space of the intifada, as well as his constant reflection on cinema narrative.

 

Rashid Masharawi -- 75', Arabic (Palestine/Germany/Netherlands: 1995)

Haifawi

 

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A documentary which chronicles the lives of an elder Palestinian generation who decided to stay in their homes in Haifa after 1948. The film's subjects are aged women and men who are over seventy, still living in Haifa, narrating their personal experience through the 1948 Nakba, when their families were exiled from their homeland.

 

FILMMAKER

Darwish Abu Al-Rish -- 52' (Palestine: 2000)