The first full length film to be shot within the disputed Palestinian West Bank "Green Line," FERTILE MEMORY is the feature debut of Michel Khleifi, acclaimed director of the Cannes Film Festival triumph, WEDDING IN GALILEE. Lyrically blending both documentary and narrative elements, Khleifi skillfully and lovingly crafts a portrait of two Palestinian women whose individual struggles both define and transcend the politics that have torn apart their homes and their lives.
Portrait of Belgian historian, reporter and documentarian André Dartevelle.
Acclaimed director Michel Khleifi's story of a Palestinian film-maker 'M' living in Europe, who returns home to Ramallah to film witness accounts of the 1948 Nakba - not only explores the events of that tumultuous era, but places them in context with the uncertainty and tension of present-day Palestine. Over the course of a single day and night, M's solipsistic existence is shaken when his nephew kills a man in Nazareth, placing the entire family at risk of reprisals. This masterful feature - a quietly witty, complex and occasionally surreal depiction of an exile's relationship with Palestine - marks a new direction in Khleifi's work.
Route 181 is the epic record of a road trip undertaken in the summer of 2002 by two filmmakers, one Palestinian and one Israeli, along sections of what had been designated as the border between Israel and Palestine by U.N. Resolution 181 in 1947.
A Palestinian boy becomes entranced with a beautiful Romani girl and a fairy tale world she weaves amidst conflict in Gaza. The children explore nature, mysticism and what their future holds, while learning to live with the surrounding brutality c. 1990. Yusef's family scrapes by in a seaside camp while his father's in prison and his heavily-armed brother's on the run, parrying with Israeli troops. Salah, Yusef's schoolmate from a well-off Arab family strives faithfully to assist them, while Yusef helps an elderly, blind neighbor escape from his lonely abandonment into the North American dreamworld he's waited so long for.
Michel Khleifi interviews several interfaith and interracial couples in "Israel," asking each where they met, how they have addressed religious or cultural differences, how their families have responded to the relationship, and how they chose where to live. Most share similar stories of ostracisation. cenes from a rendition of Romeo and Juliet appear throughout the documentary.
Two Palestinian lovers, parted during the 60s when he is imprisoned for resisting the Israeli occupation and she sorrowfully emigrates to the US, come together again in Jerusalem some 18 years later. He works for an agricultural aid organization, she is a scholar researching the meaning of sacrifice in Palestinian society. Around them rages the turmoil of the first Intifada.
A Palestinian seeks Israeli permission to waive curfew to give his son a fine wedding. The military governor's condition is that he and his officers attend. The groom berates his father for agreeing. Women ritually prepare the bride; men prepare the groom. Guests gather. The Arab youths plot violence. One Israeli officer swoons in the heat and Arab women take her into the cool house. A thoroughbred gets loose and runs to a mined field; soldiers and Arabs must cooperate to rescue it. As darkness falls, tensions between army and villagers rise, and the groom's wedding-night anger and impotence threaten family dignity and honor. Can cool heads prevail?
Trio is a cinematic series of filmed portraits that shows, in a single large, fixed and silent shot of 3 minutes and 20 seconds, three people free to do what they want.
Focusing on key Arab films produced in the last 20 years. Férid Boughedir traces the development of the film-makers' concern to produce more socially aware cinema. Themes include the issue of Palestinian homeland rights and the nature of Arab identity. The film-makers also share a desire to develop a strong poetic tradition.
Since the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948, countless Palestinian villages have been erased from the map. This film uses poignant images of bombardments, destroyed buildings, and disfigured people to illustrate this. All that remains are ruins, bearing silent witness in the landscape. Ma'Loul, just west of Nazareth, is one such ruined village. It was inhabited principally by Palestinian Christians, who were forced to leave in 1948 during the Israeli War of Independence. A detailed painting still bears testimony to the existence of the village, which had seen Jewish, Roman, Ottoman, and Palestinian rulers come and go since ancient times. But Ma'Loul also lives on in the memories of its former -- now elderly -- inhabitants, who tell the story of exactly what happened.