Boston Palestine Film Festival 2009

A group of youth from Shu’fat refugee camp imagine their camp in the year 2161, when the Israeli Occupation and military check-points have ended and become a part of the past. Through the film, the youth reflect on their dreams of the future as well as their current life under the Occupation in the year 2009.

The definitive documentary about American academic Norman Finkelstein. Devoted son of Holocaust survivors, ardent critic of Israel and US Middle East policy, and author of five provocative books including The Holocaust Industry, Finkelstein has been at the center of many controversies, most recently when DePaul University denied him tenure. David Ridgen's films include On the Borders of Gardens , about Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and Mississippi Cold Case , a film that helped bring Ku Klux Klansman James Ford Seale to justice for the murders of two African American youths 43 years later. Ridgen is also spearheading two unprecedented collaborations in Canada and the United States that will seek to investigate all the remaining civil rights era cold cases in the American south, and a number of unsolved cases from Canada. David was born in Ontario. He attended Queen's University in Kingston, ON and has lived in Lebanon and the Canadian Arctic. Nicolas Rossier is a New-York based film producer and director whose TV and film work has been shown worldwide. He studied theater and film production at the Lee Strasberg Institute and the School for Visual Arts in New York. His latest films include the award winning Aristide and the Endless Revolution which investigates the events leading to the 2004 overthrow of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and the acclaimed television documentary Brothers and Others that explores the impact of profiling on arabs and muslims after 9/11. Rossier was raised in Geneva, Switzerland and has lived in the US for more than 10 years. Film reviews: Typecast Films Indybay.org American Radical the Film Infamous Scribbler

Three’s a crowd, especially in bed. In the romantic comedy Arafat & I , Marwan is a neurotic Palestinian in London with identity issues. He’s finally met Lisa, the girl he’s going to marry. Everything about her is perfect— she was even born on the same day as Chairman Arafat! But does Lisa know the significance of this coincidence? Mahdi Fleifel received a BA in Film Production at the International Film School of Wales. There he wrote and directed his first short Shadi in the Beautiful Well , a story set in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain El-Helweh in South Lebanon. The film won numerous international prizes, including the prestigious DM Davies Award. His second short, Hamoudi & Emil , won Best Foreign Short Award at the New York International Film Festival. In 2006 Mahdi graduated with an MA in screenwriting at Royal Holloway UL. At the NFTS he has written, directed and acted in comedies, most notably Arafat & I . The film won the Best Film Prize at the Pisek Student Film Festival in the Czech Republic.

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, 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, trying through these themes to appeal to our relationship with space and time.

Due to the planned construction of the Separation Wall, the Palestinian village of Bil'in in the West Bank, is about to lose more than half of its land to Israel. The residents of the village decide to embark on a nonviolent struggle against the construction of the Wall. The film exposes the extraordinary relationship formed between the villagers and Shai, the director, who arrives with a group of Israeli peace activists (Anarchists Against the Wall) and the conflict that arises between him, as a former IDF soldier, and the Israeli soldiers on the ground. Shai Carmeli Pollak did not come to Bil’in as a filmmaker, but as an activist, to take part in the protest against the land theft caused by the separation barrier. For a year and a half, he used his camera to document the moments of despair and hope, danger and courage and the birth of true partnership between Palestinians and Israelis. Bil'in has become a symbol of the joint struggle against the barrier and the occupation.

Intent on making a film, a group of resourceful young boys decide to go where the cameras are, even if that means the middle of the Gaza Strip. The film, created and produced under the auspices of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, is one of 22 shorts based on major themes of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Hani Abu Assad is a Palestinian film director and writer, born in 1961 in Nazareth. After several years as an airplane engineer in the Netherlands, Abu-Assad entered the world of cinema and television, beginning with the BBC. After directing the award-winning shorts Paper House and The 13th and producing the feature Curfew , Abu-Assad directed his first feature documentary, the bittersweet Nazareth 2000 . His follow-up Rana’s Wedding was selected for Critics Week at the 2002 Cannes film festival, while the documentary Ford Transit played at Sundance. His last feature film, Paradise Now (2005), won several international awards including a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film, and was nominated for an Academy Award.

This incredible Spanish production spotlights superb talents of the contemporary Palestinian music scene. The film begins with Marcel Khalife at Mahmoud Darwish’s funeral and then traverses Palestine/Israel showcasing a diverse range of musical performances along the way. Rappers, a wedding singer, and classical musicians express their personal struggles through their music. From the billboards and neon of Tel Aviv to the poverty and oppression of Gaza and the West Bank, Checkpoint Rock: Songs of Palestine presents a diversity of extraordinary performers who will change the vision we have of a people under occupation. This is a trip through a place which the world is always looking at but which we know almost nothing about. What music provides this mythical place with a voice and melody? Who are its most representative musicians and how do they live? What do they think about the place that they have to live in and how do they deal with it through their lyrics and their melodies? Film reviews: If Americans Knew Palestine News Network Manuchao.net

City of Borders takes viewers into Shushan, a gay bar in the heart of Jerusalem where people of opposing nationalities, religious affiliations, and sexual orientations gather under one roof to find acceptance and create a community among people who typically view one another with deep suspicion. Set against the construction of Israel’s Separation Wall and the struggle to hold a gay pride parade in Jerusalem, this resilient community fights daily for dignity and their right to be who they are. In observing the lives and struggles of the regulars at Shushan, City of Borders highlights the bond forged when people from warring worlds embrace what everyone shares in common. Yun Suh has worked in radio and broadcast television news for the past eight years, producing documentary shorts in her spare time. She has extensively covered news on the Middle East and has reported from Israel, West Bank and Gaza Strip. Her nominations include Best Radio Documentary from the National Federation of Community Broadcasters for her one-hour long radio report, Sabra & Shatilla (2003), on the survivors of the systematic 1982 massacre of Palestinians in Lebanese refugee camps. She received a local Emmy nomination for producing a news feature, Comfort Women (2001). In 2002, she earned the Support, Training and Access for New Directors (STAND) grant from the Film Arts Foundation. Guest presenter: Tom Wallace Tom Wallace is a human rights and media activist which includes issues relating to Palestine as well as GLBT and AIDS issues. During the spring of 2003 he spent three months in the West Bank and Gaza as the media coordinator for the International Solidarity Movement: a particularly difficult time for Palestinians and internationals alike. He co-founded Rachel's Words and built American Hummus , a website devoted to analyzing US broadcast media relating to Palestine and the Middle East in general. He is now studying film making in Tucson AZ. Film review from Variety

***DIRECTOR RASHID MASHARAWI RETROSPECTIVE – PART 2*** Curfew is Masharawi’s first feature film. The effects of a curfew upon one extended family during a single day are chronicled in this drama set in Gaza in 1993, before the Oslo Accords. The day begins normally enough: Children are playing and Radar Abu Raji, the family’s youngest son, plays with them. Suddenly the Israelis announce an open-ended curfew over the loudspeakers and move in with tanks to take over the streets. Viewers experience what it is like to cope with the constraints of life under curfew. Through the microcosm of the Abu Raji family, they also gain insight into some of the societal dynamics at play in an earlier, somewhat less restricted period in Palestine. Rashid Masharawi, film artist, born in Gaza in 1962 to a family of refugees from Jaffa. He grew up in the Shati refugee camp. Rashid Masharawi lives and works in Ramallah, where he founded the Cinema Production and Distribution Center in 1996 with the aim of promoting local film productions. He also sponsors a mobile cinema, which allows him to screen films in Palestinian refugee camps. Other projects include the annual Kids Film Festival and major workshops on film production and directing. Masharawi regularly organizes readings and discussion forums at the Al-Matal Cultural Centre. With his documentaries and feature films, he has also made a name for himself and has received several film awards. Film review: Electronic Intifada