Boston Palestine Film Festival 2008

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.