Boston Palestine Film Festival 2008

Six young Arab citizens of Israel face the challenges of growing up amidst a prevailing culture that considers them a “threat”—even as they also critically examine their own inherited values. All are descendants of those Palestinians who managed to remain on their lands through the Nakba, yet they represent very different walks of life: a Druze military refusenik, a female hip hop singer, an LGBT activist, a rural teacher in the Negev, a Bedouin from an unrecognized village, and a politician working in the Knesset. Produced in cooperation with the Haifa-based Baladna Association for Arab Youth. Oriol Poveda , born in Barcelona in 1978, is a freelance journalist and independent filmmaker based in Palestine. He has lived in Barcelona, Berlin, Chiapas and in different towns in Israel and Palestine. His works include With The Caravan To Somewhere Else and The Peoples of the Ceiba. Currently he works as guest filmmaker for Palestinian and Israeli advocacy and human rights organizations.

A group of four young filmmakers in a blue Fiat Uno make their way through the West Bank from Jenin to Ramallah to have their favorite pizza- a trip considerably lengthened by Israeli checkpoints. Mohanad Yaqubi was born in Kuwait in 1981. He is one of the founders of Idioms Film. Yaqubi graduated as a mechanical engineer from Birzeit University 2004, working as the production manager of Idioms Film. He has directed several short fictional and documentary films. His work is a personal approach to reality, working in themes such as boredom, emptiness, and baseness. With these themes, his films are trying to appeal to our relationship with space and time.

Made by youth from the Al-Rowwad Center in the Aida refugee camp near Bethlehem, this short film poignantly captures the routine inconvenience and indignity suffered by Palestinians trying to get to their jobs on the other side of a massive and dehumanizing checkpoint. Anne Paq is a French photographer who has been living in the West Bank for the past four years. She has focused her work on the daily life of Palestinians, the refugees, non-violent resistance, the Wall and its impact on the communities. In 2006, she became the coordinator of Images for Life, a project run by the Al Rowwad Center in the Aida refugee camp. The project is aimed at empowering Palestinians through training in photography and film-making. This is her first experience in film-making. Mimmi Nietula is a journalism student from Finland. She has made a few short documentaries in Finland and one in the Aida refugee camp called Next Door to Freedom, 2007.

The main street in Hebron's once thriving commercial area has been closed to Palestinians since 2000. The army closed all the shops and sealed the doors. Six years later, three Palestinians try to walk down the street. B'Tselem is part of the Israeli Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories has, for the past 20 years, been combining first class research, innovative advocacy and public education strategies to effect change.

A touching glimpse at the experience of a very young Palestinian boy just after he is removed from the Israeli penal system.  His family and others try to reassure him during his first taste of the “free” world, yet he can’t help but miss the place where he was born, the place where his mother remains: her prison cell. Akram Al-Ashqar was born in Tulkarm in 1982. He graduated from the Arab American University in 2006 as a Computer Information Technology Professional. Al-Ashqar participated in the Palestinian Audio - Visual Project 2005 Training Program by A.M. Qattan Foundation. He directed the short film Red, Dead and Mediterranean (2006), which was about a generation of Palestinian children who are obsessed with a sea they know nothing about. This was part of the “Palestine Summer 2006” project; a film collection co-produced by "Palestinian Filmmakers' Collective" & Akka Films.

The first in a series entitled Inessential (Gaza in Three Pieces), this short film records a Gazan fisherman describing the Israeli-imposed economic stranglehold that threatens his livelihood. Once among the proudest and most skilled population within Palestinian society, Gaza’s fishermen are now its poorest. Israel has drastically reduced the nautical miles in which fishermen can make their living, leaving them with nothing to fish and little to do. In this short piece, Hussam al-Habash, a member of the fishermen’s syndicate, describes life under the siege, and common harassment and shooting incidents against Palestinian fishermen. Maryam Monalisa Gharavi visited Gaza and filmed Inessential in January 2008. She has written/directed several short films, including Psychosomatic (2005) Dreams of Wingless Flight (2003) and All About My Lover (2002). She worked on feature film projects Situation Room #2 (2005) with NY-based director Steve Staso, Security (2005) with Cannes/Sundance-winning director Rob Nilsson, and most recently on the PBS television documentary Stand Up: Muslim American Comics Come of Age (2008). She has screened her work at the Pacific Film Archive, Women of Color Film Festival, Anthology Film Archive, among others. Currently she is a doctoral candidate in Comparative Literature and Film and Visual Studies at Harvard University.

The second in a series entitled Inessential (Gaza in Three Pieces), this short film features farmers relating the effects of Israeli blockades on their ability to farm. Long crippled by the effects of Israeli bulldozing, shelling, and sanctions, the farms of Beit Hanoun, located just four miles from Israel, have been shut down. An eerie silence punctuated by occasional Israeli strikes envelops the farm. Maryam Monalisa Gharavi visited Gaza and filmed Inessential in January 2008. She has written/directed several short films, including Psychosomatic (2005) Dreams of Wingless Flight (2003) and All About My Lover (2002). She worked on feature film projects Situation Room #2 (2005) with NY-based director Steve Staso, Security (2005) with Cannes/Sundance-winning director Rob Nilsson, and most recently on the PBS television documentary Stand Up: Muslim American Comics Come of Age (2008). She has screened her work at the Pacific Film Archive, Women of Color Film Festival, Anthology Film Archive, among others. Currently she is a doctoral candidate in Comparative Literature and Film and Visual Studies at Harvard University.

During a Tulkarem raid, the Israeli Defense Force kills an innocent mother. B'Tselem is part of the Israeli Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories has, for the past 20 years, been combining first class research, innovative advocacy and public education strategies to effect change.

London-based filmmaker Katia Saleh was in Lebanon in 2006 covering the war in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah. One year later she went back and found out that the enemy had changed. Now the Palestinian refugees were threatened by a new group called Fateh el Islam who mysteriously entered Lebanon and based itself in the camp of Nahr el Bared in north Lebanon. Katia follows the children who are being displaced again within their own camps. Katia Saleh has been directing and producing her own documentaries over the last two years, making films primarily about the Middle East. The most recent film she has made for Al Jazeera English was Deadly Playground about the remaining 1 million unexploded cluster bombs that Israel dropped in South Lebanon in 2006 and how children are living among them.