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Wednesday, December 26, 2007

[wvns] Palestinians make films despite occupation, no audience

Palestinians make three feature films despite
occupation, no audience and no funding
The Associated Press
December 10, 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/12/10/africa/ME-GEN-Palestinians-Movies.php

RAMALLAH, West Bank: In a flip-flop of reality, a surly Palestinian
soldier guards a West Bank checkpoint, as a line of haggard Israelis
wait to have their ID cards examined.

The scene is from a satirical Palestinian film that reverses the roles
of occupier and occupied, one of three full-length feature films,
along with a few shorts, that were shot in the West Bank this year.
It's the most ever made in one year in a place more accustomed to
seeing news cameras filming scenes of bloodshed.

"Each Palestinian film made is a miracle," said George Khleifi,
co-author of a book on the subject.

The films tell stories through Palestinian eyes, trying to get beyond
the simplicity of news coverage, which the artists say often reduces
Palestinians to either militants or victims.

"Humor, passion, beauty, all of it is overlooked," said director Najwa
Najjar, who just completed shooting a feature-length film about a
female Palestinian dancer whose husband is sent to an Israeli prison.

While Palestinian films range from intense realism to oddball
surrealism, most highlight the experience of life under Israel's
occupation of the West Bank. Like a signature, almost every
Palestinian film features an Israeli checkpoint.

Some critics argue that such a narrow subject matter limits the films'
artistic reach. That reach is further limited by a lack of places to
see the films. There's only one cinema in all of the West Bank and
Gaza Strip, and most film makers refuse to show their films in Israel,
skipping an important potential audience. In the end, most viewers are
European audiences.

This year, Palestinians shot three feature films with relatively large
budgets.

Annemarie Jacir, director of "Salt of this Sea," shot in the West Bank
this year, obtained European funding of €800,000 ($1.2 million).

Although modest in global terms, it was exceptional here. "There's a
generation of young directors reaching maturity who are becoming big
enough to access large funds," said Khleifi.

It helps that Palestinian filmmakers have notched up some success
abroad. Most recently, Hani Abu-Assad, the Israeli-born director of
the 2005 film "Paradise Now," earned a Golden Globe and an Oscar
nomination for his tale of two Palestinian men who decide to become
suicide bombers.

In one scene from Enas Muthaffar's short film, Occupazion, Israeli
protesters angrily wave blue-and-white Israeli flags while they
demonstrate against Palestinian rule. One of them, wearing a
blue-and-white headscarf in a parody of the Palestinians' signature
black-and-white checkered headdress, shouts in heavily accented
English, "it is time to accept the end of the Palestinian occupation!"

"I want, I need, to tell a story," Muthaffar, 30, said after a recent
screening of Occupazion. Audiences laughed through the low-budget
movie, screened twice in the Arab sector of Jerusalem. Too many people
turned up to fit in the 40-seat room where it opened.

Although the film asks Israelis to stand in Palestinian shoes, few of
them will ever see it. Muthaffar, like most Palestinian artists,
refuses to screen her film in Israel, to protest Israel's occupation.

"I'm not saying Israelis can't watch my film," Muthaffar said — just
not in Israel. Like many Palestinians, Muthaffar does not recognize
east Jerusalem as a part of Israel. East Jerusalem was captured in the
1967 Mideast war and annexed to Israel, but the move is not
internationally recognized.

While many Palestinian artists refuse to show their work in Israel,
local Palestinians are equally unlikely to see the films.

There were at least 10 cinemas throughout the West Bank and Gaza, but
nearly all have been burned down by angry youths or simply closed
since the 1987 outbreak of the first Palestinian uprising.

People believed cinema was a "frivolous hobby," when arrests, deaths
and curfews marked daily Palestinian life, said Amjad Batta, a
Palestinian cinema buff. Even after the fighting died down, cinemas
stayed closed as a rising tide of conservative Islam replaced angry
nationalism.

Only Ramallah, with a large middle class, has a cinema, the Kasaba.
Some of its films show nudity, and a nearby bar serves beer —
reflecting the theater's progressive audience in an otherwise
conservative society.

There's little official support for filmmakers.

The Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, which runs the West Bank, doesn't
fund movies and the militant Hamas movement, which runs the Gaza
Strip, has been hit hard by an international embargo and is unlikely
to finance productions that don't bend to its own conservative Muslim
world view.

Khleifi says that all the absurdities involved in Palestinian
filmmaking — Israel's occupation, the self-imposed boycott of Israeli
audiences, the single cinema and rising Islamic conservatism — make
the end product all the more important.

"Cinema allows us to look at ourselves and open a dialogue with
ourselves and others," he said.

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