Boston Palestine Film Festival 2008

Students of San Francisco State University attempt to have a mural depicting Palestinian culture in the Diaspora displayed on a San Francisco State University building and must navigate the resulting “controversy” to overcome opposition. Today the mural is the only one of its kind on any U.S. university campus and, more significantly, was the first on any U.S. public institution. Norma Shiheiber born in the United States to a Palestinian family who was forced out of Jaffa, Palestine in 1948. She studied journalism at SFSU. For the last 20 years she has been focused on raising children. Now she is pursuing her dream, documentary filmmaking. Her niece Jacqueline Husary is one of the main protagonists in the film, spear-heading an initiative to have a Palestinian mural displayed on campus.

Is a haunting film based on photographs of black dresses in Lifta, a Palestinian village near Jerusalem. The houses have been empty since 1948. The filmmaker returns to the black empty dresses the initial moment, the history of their source, the female body that used to wear them. Raeda Adon is a Palestinian artist and actor born in Acre in 1972. She lives and works in Jerusalem. She achieved a Bachelors in Fine Arts from the Department of Fine Arts, Bezalel Academy of Arts & Design, Jerusalem (2002).

Kheir and Saado are old bohemian friends who live in occupied Old Akka, in the North of Israel. One is a singer and the other a fruit and vegetable merchant who roams the town on his horse Mercedes selling his grandmother’s famous pickles. Then one day the police accuse him of stealing an antique gun and a whole series of comic situations lead to a surprising ending. Palestine Audio-Visual Project of the A.M. Qattan Foundation trained Palestinian young adults to use film to convey their diverse experiences. Filmmakers in Palestine face difficulties not only in securing funding or finding qualified technicians, but also in finding a distributor for their work. In response, the A.M. Qattan Foundation created the Palestinian Audio-Visual Project (PAVP) and ran the program from 2004-2007. PAVP was co-funded by the A.M. Qattan Foundation and the European Union. The project had three areas of intervention: capacity-building through a National Training Program; a Film Education Program aimed at school students; and publication and distribution of audio-visual works with Palestinian themes. For more information: www.qattanfoundation.org.

This dramatic film is based on the real lives of children living in the Aida refugee camp, where conditions are often oppressive. It expresses the basic yearning of youth to have a safe place to play soccer in the absence of parks and sport facilities in their camp. Filmmakers: Maysan Saed, Murad Karaja, Mohammad Qassim, Mohammad Waleed, Aboud Al Azzeh, Ahmad Al Araj and Mohammad Faris. The film was produced during the Digital Storytelling Workshop conducted by Voices Beyond Walls at the Lajee Youth Center in the Aida refugee camp near Bethlehem, West Bank in August 2008.

A young Bedouin man and his family live in a small Israeli village that receives no services from the state. Despite being labeled a traitor, he decides to join the Israeli Army in a bid to win recognition—and ultimately be able to provide for his little sister, who has a health condition that requires constant vigilance. Ayelet Bechar is a filmmaker and journalist. She is a graduate of the Tel Aviv University Department of Film and Television and of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York. She has made two documentaries including Just Married. Just Married has already won Best Documentary Film at three international film festivals. Ayelet lives in Tel Aviv, Israel with her family.

Often only children are allowed to visit their relatives in prison. This is their story. 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.

This collaboration between French choreographer Jean Gaudin and Palestinian filmmaker Mohanad Yaqubi presents a nighttime tour of Ramallah, animated by Gaudin’s eccentric but gently propulsive movements. Mohanad Yaqubi , born in Kuwait 1981, 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. By working with these themes, Yaqubi is trying to appeal to our relationship with space and time.

The Roof is a lingeringly poetic film charting the Palestinian director Kamal Aljafari's journey back to his family and homeland Palestine. Despite the intense political background for the film, its focus is universal, as the director explores the political and social context for his story through a lyrical registration of the human capacity to imagine and create worlds across time and space. At the heart of the film is the belief that home is a feeling as well as a place. Even if a home is bombed to pieces its inhabitants will take it with them wherever they go, unable to leave something so integral to their sense of self. Kamal Aljafari , born in 1972, graduated from the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne in 2003. In addition to The Roof, he has also made Visit Iraq (2003). He is the recipient of the Visual Art Prize of the city of Cologne for the year 2004 and artist fellowship grants from Kunstfonds and Kunststiftung NRW. His work has been shown internationally at film festivals and art galleries. He is currently in pre-production for his next documentary film, Port of Memory.

Palestinian filmmaker Michel Khleifi and Israeli filmmaker Eyal Sivan set off on a two-month cinematic journey along the north-south axis of the land of their birth. They trace their trajectory on a map and call it Route 181, after U.N. Resolution 181, which in 1947 called for the partition Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. All those who cross their path are given voice: men and women, Israelis and Palestinians, young and old— all captured in the everyday life of a sixty-year conflict. By portraying both the divide of the physical landscape and that of the humans who inhabit it, the film elegantly conveys a fuller understanding. Michel Khleifi was born in Nazareth in 1950. In 1970 he traveled to Belgium where he studied television and theater. His films include: Fertile Memory (1980), Ma'loul Celebrates its Destruction (1985), Wedding in Galilee (International Critics Prize, Cannes 1987), Canticle of the Stones (1990), L'Ordre du Jour (1993), and Tale of the Three Jewels (1995). Tale of the Three Jewels is the first feature film ever to be filmed in the Gaza Strip. It was made in the days following the Hebron Massacre and before the arrival of the Palestinian Authority. The Michel Khleifi program was made possible by the participation of the Program in Cinema Studies at Northeastern University.