Occupied Territories: Palestinian filmmakers beat the odds to hit silver screen

CNN
LONDON, England (CNN) --

When the 10th London Palestine Film Festival opens this week, Londoners will have greater access to films made in the Palestinian territories than many people living in the region.


Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir's first feature film, "Salt of This Sea," premiered at Cannes Film Festival in 2008.

Today, there is only one movie theater operating in the West Bank. Gaza has none.

The "Al Kasaba" theater in Ramallah is the only formal film venue for a population of nearly 2.5 million in the West Bank. Due to travel restrictions it is virtually inaccessible to the one and one half million Palestinians residing in Gaza.

It is estimated that about 80 percent of Palestinian children have never been to a movie theater, according to a report in The Christian Science Monitor.

With this lack of distribution, and hardly any formal funding available, producing a film within the Palestinian territories is a tremendous challenge.

Against the odds, the region's filmmakers completed three feature films and an estimated eight shorts in 2008 -- more than ever before. Local directors are determined to tell their stories and have adapted to cope with the region's difficult circumstances.

Lack of cinematic infrastructure

One of the greatest obstacles filmmakers face is a lack of equipment and crews. According to industry experts, directors in the Palestinian territories have little hope of competing with international news media over the limited resources.

"Crews who can work for international news organizations at very high salaries don't want to work for independent film makers," says director and coordinator of the Shashat's Women's Film Festival, Alia Arasoughly. Are you interested in seeing more films made by Palestinian directors? Tell us below in the SoundOff box below

"They don't want to rent their equipment out for a 10-hour shooting day, when they can rent it out for just two hours and triple the price to an international crew."

As a consequence of this, filmmakers are looking to local residents for production assistance.

Annemarie Jacir's first feature film,"Salt of This Sea," which premiered last year at Cannes Film Festival, tells the story of an American woman who travels to Israel to visit the land where her grandfather lived before Palestinians were ejected in 1948.

The film was shot with a crew consisting largely of novices assembled by the director, including a former ambulance driver, a jeweler and a radio DJ.

"There were always discussions with my producers, who preferred bringing more experienced professional people from Europe in, and I insisted that I'd rather have locals even if they're less experienced," Jacir told CNN.

"We're trying to build something in [the Palestinian territories], and when things got tough, because they believed in what we were doing, they stayed."

During the shoot Jacir's team also received unexpected support from members of the local community, who brought them food and drinks in between takes.

"We even had the entire Palestinian police force blocking traffic; going out of their way to help us," remembers Jacir.

Restricted Mobility

A further complication faced by Jacir and her colleagues is the limitation on movement and access in the Palestinian territories.

Since Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, Israeli authorities have imposed varying degrees of restriction on the movement of people in and out of the territories, according to human rights group, Amnesty International.

In 2007, the year in which Jacir shot the majority of her film, Amnesty reported 84 manned checkpoints and 465 unmanned blockades within the West Bank alone.

As a result of these security measures, which the Israelis say are necessary to secure their country from Palestinian attacks, the production of "Salt of This Sea," a movie with over 80 shooting locations was logistically very complex.

In order to shoot the road movie lawfully, Jacir and her crew had to apply for permission to leave Ramallah.

"Every single crew member was rejected. So, just purely getting through the checkpoints and the logistics of keeping a film crew together was an obstacle."

Obtaining shooting permission was equally problematic. Permits for various locations including Jaffa were refused repeatedly -- a hindrance which did not deter Jacir.

"In some cases we just filmed anyway. We put the actors in a real situation and we just did it guerrilla-style. That's how most Palestinian filmmakers are managing to do their work," she told CNN.

A bright future?

While drawbacks such as a lack of funding, a lack of resources, and restrictions of movement would dissuade directors in many other countries, members of the growing film community in the Palestinian territories are forging bonds over the difficulties.

While Arasoughly and Jacir agree that it would be going too far to speak of a "national cinema" at this stage, they look to the future with great optimism.

The novice crew members Jacir recruited to work on "Salt of This Sea" have continued to find work in filmmaking -- a fact Jacir believes indicates an industry is gradually starting to emerge.

"I think there's a wave coming -- a lot of new filmmakers, a lot of people making documentaries and more experimental films, working together," Jacir told CNN.

Arasoughly, whose Shashat festival will enter its fifth year this fall, is equally hopeful.

"The fact that we, under the harshest of conditions in the Arab world, have been able to hold an annual women's film festival, and that hundreds of students come to our screenings means that people want their worlds to be expanded," she said.

"They want wider horizons, and I think for me, this is what makes it possible to go on in the context that we live in."

Saudi Arabia: Serial actors, actress detained by religious police in Riyadh

By Abdul Rahman Shaheen, Correspondent
Published: March 31, 2009, 18:29


Riyadh: In an early hour swoop on a famous hotel in Riyadh City, members of the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (religious police) have taken into custody a number of artists and other members of the production unit of a television serial.

Those incustody included three actors and one actress who were then handed over to the local police. Later, they were released on bail.

Acting on a tip-off, a religious police squad raided the location of the serial on the lobby of the hotel in the eastern part of the city on Monday early morning.

The artists were engaged in shooting an episode of the serial "Ayyamu Al Surab" (Days of Surab), produced by Al Sadaf Company.

According to Al Watan Arabic daily, those who have been taken into custody included the noted Omani actor Ebrahim Al Zidjali, artists Ali Saad and Fawaz Al Jaser and the actress Sahar.

Religious policemen took them to the Commission’s nearby Omar bin Al Khattab branch office and then handed them over to the police.

According to sources at the production unit of the serial, religious policemen have taken the team members into custody accusing gender-mixing of male and female artists at the hotel lobby.

They said that the actress Sahar was detained for some time at the reform centre of the Commission where she underwent guidance classes by a group of women officials about dangers of mixing with men at public places.

Immediately after the incident, the remaining members of the production team vacated the hotel premises.

Later, sources at Al Manar police station confirmed the report and said that the detained artists were released on bail. When contacted by reporters, the religious police sources refused to comment on the incident.

Reaction

Reacting to the incident, which made almost all the members of the production team dumbfounded, the Omani actor Ebrahim Al Zidjali wondered whether film shooting is a taboo in the Kingdom even though the official television channels air several serials, whose shooting take place at public places with the permission of the civilian and security authorities.

He also drew attention to the recently concluded Janadriya festival where King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz honoured a number of Saudi artists.

Saudi Arabia: Public cinema after 30 years enthralls audience

JEDDAH – After a long wait of 30 years, public cinema is back in Saudi Arabia. Using the occasion of Eid Al-Adha, Rowad Media and Kawthar Foundation and Production screened a show for the public at the King Abdul Aziz Cultural Center in Abraq Al-Raghama, attended by a large number of interested men and women who watched the comedy film “Manahi.”

“We haven’t had public cinema in Saudi Arabia for 30 years,” said one viewer. “That’s a long time, and we have missed it,” he added.

The 9-day festival began on Dec. 10 and two shows are being screened daily in Jeddah and Taif.

“On the opening night there was a flood of media personnel which made it just like a red carpet Hollywood premier,” said Fayez Al-Malki, the film’s main actor.

“I hope that this film will be a real commercial breakthrough in Saudi Arabia,” he said. “I am fully satisfied with the Rotana production and hope the film will be appreciated in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and around the world,” he added.

“Manahi,” which takes its title from the name of the film’s hero, is a comedy with a touch of Saudi culture and tradition. Apart from Al-Malki, the film stars Syrian actress Mona Wassef, Kuwaiti actor Abdul Imam Abdullah and a number of young Saudi actors.

“This is the first film in the revival of Saudi cinema,” said Ayman Halawani the director general of Rotana Studios.

“We are pleased with this achievement and we thank the organizers for such an opportunity. Soon we will provide the public with films which are appropriate to the customs and traditions of our society,” he said.

“I want to thank Prince Khaled Al-Faisal, Emir of Makkah, for giving us an opportunity to show films in Saudi Arabia just as is being done in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and Egypt,” said Mamdouh Salim, director of Rowad Media.

Thousands of viewers enjoyed the film on the first day with the audience laughing at every scene and singing songs with the hero. “We enjoyed the movie as there was entertainment with an important message,” said one man who brought his wife and children to see the movie.

“I think that the opposition to public cinema will not continue for long. We previously witnessed opposition to satellite channels in Saudi Arabia and a ban on mobile phones with cameras,” he said. Among those who came to see the film, young Saudis enjoyed the movie a lot.

“We have been looking forward to movies being shown publicly for a long time,” said Abdul Aziz, a 23-year-old Saudi.

“Instead we have had to travel to other countries to see films. We want movies in our own country that reflect our traditions and culture,” he said.

–By Fouzia Khan, Saudi Gazette

Iran: Amnesty Film On Iranian Women's Movement Striking Global Chord

A video shot by Amnesty International to show its support for the Iranian women's movement is attracting a surprising amount of worldwide attention.

The short but moving film -- posted on Amnesty's website and on YouTube -- was filmed at last month's Amnesty International U.K. Student Conference in the English city of Reading. It features evocative music and shows hundreds of students carrying banners and standing in support of the One Million Signatures Campaign to end discriminatory laws against women in Iran.

Not a single word is spoken.



Heather Harvey, Amnesty International U.K.'s Stop Violence Against Women campaign manager, says the annual student conference is always a big event for participants, but doesn't always generate a lot of media coverage.

This year was different, she says, with the video sparking calls of support from the Iranian diaspora, from Kurdish and other ethnic minority groups, and from student and women's organizations.

"I think it just shows how many people all around the world are actually watching what is happening in Iran and are supporting the women's campaign," Harvey told RFE/RL's Radio Farda.

She said the film is not a direct effort to change Iranian laws. That's for the authorities in Tehran and the Iranian people to do, she says.

"We are trying to show solidarity, to say to the women that we do support what they're campaigning for. They're simply campaigning for equality and for equal rights. [Those] equal rights are perfectly within the framework of the Iranian Constitution, within Islamic women's rights, [within] international human rights. There is no real conflict."

Harvey calls the One Million Signatures Campaign in Iran "extremely courageous and inspiring."

Women's rights activists in Iran are under increasing pressure from the government over their campaign for equal rights.

"What I find shocking, I suppose, is that the Iranian authorities see it as so threatening," Harvey said, "because all it is is women want to have an equal role in building and creating their society. If you exclude 50 percent of the population from decision-making, then ultimately your decisions are going to be flawed because you're not going to be coming up with policies or solutions that are really helpful to the whole of that society."

-- Radio Free Europe

Middle East: In the Middle East, women directors unspool social commentary

By Danna Harman Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

Tel Aviv - In the Middle East, women have a new voice: the movies. As nascent film industries bloom in the region, a few emerging women directors are probing some of the most delicate subjects within their male-dominated communities, giving viewers a glimpse into once-veiled worlds.

"Women realized that they were in double jeopardy – of having Westerners speak for them, and men speak for them.... so they got behind the cameras," says Mona Eltahawy, a New York-based Egyptian commentator and lecturer on Arab and Muslim issues.

The Monitor recently contacted three such filmmakers – Israeli Arab Ibtisam Maraana and Buthina Canaan Khoury of the Palestine Territories; and Haifaa Al-Mansour of Saudi Arabia – to talk about their hard-won successes.

In time, these directors may come to emulate the commercial fortunes of Nadine Labaki's "Caramel," a comedic social commentary set inside a Beirut beauty salon that became Lebanon's top-grossing film of 2007, or Marjane Satrapi's "Persepolis," the Oscar-nominated film based on her childhood in Iran. (Both films are in release in the US.) But the three directors are wary of being pigeon-holed, a notion voiced by Satrapi, who lives in France.

"I think I am interesting because I make good movies," says Satrapi in a phone interview. "Not because I represent anything."

Like Satrapi, these three bold directors have often been criticized but they each share Satrapi's ethos: "I was not surprised by the objections and I don't care," she says. "I fear nothing."

Haifaa Al-Mansour

Growing up in Saudi Arabia, a country without any movie theaters, meant that when Haifaa Al-Mansour's family wanted an outing to the cinema, they'd have to drive to Bahrain.

"There is a debate nowadays in our local Shura council about opening a theater ... but it has not passed yet," sighs Mansour, speaking by phone from Australia, her new home with her husband, an American diplomat. "I make films for Saudis. I want to talk to them. Provoke them. Make them think about the issues. But it's hard when they cannot see my work."

In any case, Mansour's films wouldn't win the sort of accolades in Saudi Arabia that she has garnered at film festivals abroad. By peeking a camera lens behind the veil of Saudi Arabian life, she has ventured into unprecedented territory for a woman in a society where women are not allowed to vote, drive, study the same subjects men do, or take on the same jobs.

Mansour, one of 12 children, didn't intend to focus her filmmaking career on women's issues, but found the issues too important not to address. She began her filmmaking career making a seven-minute short, "Who?," in which a man disguised as a women – i.e., dressed in a traditional black, full-body covering called the abaya – stalks women and enters their homes. The film explores the theme of hiding behind disguises, says Mansour. Shot with a hand-held camera, the film was released in Turkey and could be seen in Saudi Arabia only on pirated DVDs. Many perceived it as an anti-abaya message.

A few years later, the documentary "Women Without Shadows" – winner of the Golden Dagger for best documentary at the Muscat film festival in Oman – wondered whether it is necessary for women to cover their faces in public in order to comply with Islamic teachings.

"I get hate e-mails," says Mansour. "People say I am not religious. That I don't respect my own culture. It's not true. I don't want to corrupt my viewers, but there are certain situations in Saudi Arabia that merit people talking about them."

Mansour's fountain of strength, she says, is her family. Her father, famous Saudi poet Abdul Rahman Mansour, brought home films for his kids to watch on video. He encouraged his daughters to study – Mansour studied comparative literature at the American University in Cairo – and didn't force them to wear the veil or rush into marriage. He was very open-minded, she says.

She hopes that viewers will bring that same quality to her work. Anyone who loves Saudi Arabia, she concludes, "needs to be critical. It can only make us better."

Ibtisam Maraana

Ibtisam Maraana was 19 when she went to see a movie for the first time. She recalls the occasion, right down to the hour, vividly. Venturing outside the Arab village of Paradise, too small to merit its own movie house, she went to a nearby Jewish town to take in a 5 p.m. showing of the Coen Brothers' "The Big Lebowski." Maraana loved it.

A decade on, she's funneled a rebellious streak into a career as an accomplished director who examines cultural mores in a fresh light.

Her 2005 film "Badal," which won the best short documentary award at Toronto's Hot Docs festival, looks at the local tradition of a package-deal arranged marriage in which a brother-sister duo from one family are married off to a duo from another family. "By coupling a girl with her more attractive brother, a family could thus ensure she found a mate," explains Maraana, who herself was considered an unattractive marriage candidate because of her "advancing" age, a scar on her hand, and beyond all, her independent streak.

The daughter of a maid who cleaned houses in a Jewish town, Maraana recalls spending that time looking "at bikes I was not allowed to ride at home in the village because I was a girl." She resented those wealthier houses and their owners but she also got a glimpse of a certain social and cultural openness that intrigued her.

Later, Maraana studied media communication in Jerusalem but soon shifted her focus. "I realized there were so many stories no one was telling," she says.

One such story, chronicled in "Three Times Divorced," is often difficult to watch. It delves into divorce and child custody in the Arab world by following Khitam, a Palestinian woman from Gaza, who is beaten, divorced, and thrown out of her house by her Israeli Arab husband. Her efforts to gain custody of her six children, to fight the Islamic sharia courts, and to gain legal status in Israel, show the power of a determined woman against all odds.

"Courage is in my genes," says Maraana calmly, sipping tea in her apartment in Florentine, an artsy south Tel Aviv neighborhood. "Women typically appreciate my movies and want to have a forum for these important issues," she says. But men, especially, surprisingly, educated ones, feel threatened."

Maraana compares her filmmaking to going to war. Not surprisingly, she longs to write a feature. "In fiction you can create your own reality," she says. "I want to make movies about love, too. I don't always want to be fighting."

Buthina Canaan Khoury

Buthina Canaan Khoury, a Christian Palestinian filmmaker from the West Bank town of Taybeh, is used to pioneering unchartered territory. She was the first Palestinian camera woman and producer for the European Broadcasting Union inside the Palestinian Territories. Now the head of her own Majd Production Company, she has nothing less than a filmmaking agenda: to highlight key Palestinian issues.

Her latest film, "Maria's Grotto," which opened November in Ramallah, takes on the often taboo subject of honor killings. In it, Khoury looks at the aftermath of two honor killings and interviews two other women who survived brutal stabbings. "This movie is not meant to give a bad image to Palestinians," she stresses. "On the contrary, we criticize ourselves because we love our society and want to help it improve."

Khoury got her start in Boston by getting an MBA in photography and filmmaking. Her first splash as a filmmaker was 2004's "Women in Struggle," an account of four women who had spent years in Israeli jails.

The filmmaker is thrilled that more women are getting behind the camera.

"It's a domino effect, in which seeing one Arab woman making a film soon inspires and encourages others to follow suit," she says. "And the more we produce, the greater the interest – before we were seen as exotic, one-off phenomenons, but now we have a diversity of voices and we are being taken more seriously."

She wouldn't mind a turn at lighter fare, though. Khoury's next film will relay the story of her own family, which moved from Boston back home to Taybeh, in the West Bank, in 1994 after the Oslo Accords – in order to fulfill their father's dream of opening the first microbrewery in the Middle East. (Not easy in a region full of "dry" spots.)

"It's challenging to do women's issues all the time," concludes Khoury. "I would like to have a little fun."