Boston Palestine Film Festival (21-30 October)

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Oct 19, 2011 Palestine-Israel
[Image from bostonpalestinefilmfest.org] [Image from bostonpalestinefilmfest.org]

Boston Palestine Film Festival (21-30 October)

By : Jadaliyya Reports

The fifth Annual Boston Palestine Film Festival features over 50 films from international filmmakers, many of whom will be present. Themes include: Work of Elia Suleiman; celebrating the legacy of Edward Said; recognizing women filmmakers; honoring past revolutions and witnessing the new Arab Spring. Venues: Museum of Fine Arts, Berklee College of Music; Harvard Law School, Cambridge and Brookline Public Libraries.

Opening Film: The Time That Remains, with Elia Suleiman in attendance, MFA October 21, 6:30 pm. Reception featuring Shusmo band follows at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Avenue of the Arts, 465 Huntington Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02115. October 21-30, 2011. For our full program: http://www.bostonpalestinefilmfest.org

Press Release

The Boston Palestine Film Festival (BPFF), co-presented with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, celebrates its fifth anniversary this year. From October 21-30, BPFF will screen over 50 Palestine-related films by Palestinian, American, Israeli, and international filmmakers at the MFA and other venues across the city. Film Premieres include the following: World Premiere (1), North American Premieres (3), USA Premieres (7), New England Premieres (4), and Boston Premieres (2). The festival also features three live music shows. Twelve distinguished invited guests will attend.

The Opening Night film is The Time That Remains (2009), by Elia Suleiman, with the director in attendance, on Friday October 21, at 6:30 pm at the MFA. The highly acclaimed film, a 2009 Cannes Selection, is a semi-biographical black comedy film written and directed by Suleiman, starring Elia Suleiman, Saleh Bakri, Leila Mouammar, and Bilal Zidani. It offers an account of the creation of the state of Israel from 1948 to the present. The film won the prestigious Black Pearl Award for Best Middle Eastern Narrative Film at the 2009 Middle East International Film Festival (MEIFF) in Abu Dhabi. It also won the Jury Grand Prize (with About Elly) at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. According to Variety Magazine: “Suleiman has unquestionably made his masterpiece with The Time That Remains.”

The film is co-presented with the Consulate General of France in Boston—Consul General

Christophe Guilhou will attend—and is sponsored by the following organizations at Northeastern University: The Program in Cinema Studies; the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures; and the Middle East Center for Peace, Culture and Development.

Elia Suleiman is a Palestinian film writer, director, actor, and producer. According to The New Yorker Magazine, “Suleiman’s name is often linked with that of Jacques Tati, and the comparison is just.”

He is best known for his 2002 film Divine Intervention, a modern tragic comedy on living under occupation in the Palestinian territories, which won the Jury Prize at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival and the International Critics Prize (FIPRESCI); also receiving the Best Foreign Film Prize at the European Awards in Rome. Divine Intervention, as well as his earlier work Chronicle of a Disappearance (1996), which won the Best First Film Prize at the 1996 Venice Film Festival, are part of a trilogy together with The Time That Remains.

All three works will be shown at separate screenings at the MFA as part of the festival, all followed by discussion with Suleiman, offering a rare opportunity for engagement with an iconic Palestinian filmmaker about a major body of his work.

The festival closes with Man Without a Cell Phone (2009), a feature debut by Sameh Zoabi, a Palestinian director who is a citizen of Israel. Zoabi, who will attend the screening, was named “one of the top 25 new faces of independent cinema” by Filmmaker Magazine. The film is a humorous, sharp take on the social milieu of a Palestinian village inside Israel. The film was selected to screen last March at the New Directors/New Films festival, presented jointly by The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) and the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Music Programs | At the reception following the Opening Night Film October 21, BPFF presents Shusmo (which means “Whatchamacallit” in Arabic), an eclectic NY-based band that has created a unique mélange of alternative Arabic music. NPR called them “funky New Yorkers with Middle Eastern roots.” The reception takes place at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at 9 pm, with directors and special guests, buffet and cocktails.

On Saturday, October 22 at the David Friend Recital Hall of Berklee College, BPFF hosts a Special Event to celebrate the legacy of the late Edward Said in facilitating access to music education and involvement for Palestinian youth, and “promoting interaction and coexistence among cultures through music.” The two-part event, called The Gift of a Music Education: Celebrating the Legacy of Edward Said, begins at 5:30 pm with a screening of the award-winning film Knowledge is the Beginning, which chronicles the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra (WEDO), established in 1999 by Edward Said and Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim with the aim of bringing together young musicians from Israel, Palestine, and various Arab countries, supported by Spanish musicians. The film traces the orchestra’s history from its founding through its historic live concert in Ramallah’s Cultural Palace in the occupied West Bank in 2005. The West-Eastern Divan, a name derived from a collection of poems by Goethe, is not only a music project, but also a model of democracy and civilized living. Edward Said called it the most important thing he had done in his life.

Following the film, a reception and concert honor the ongoing efforts of Berklee College, building on Said’s legacy, to collaborate with the Edward Said National Music Conservatory in the occupied West Bank to identify and recruit gifted Palestinian musicians to study at Berklee. The students have prepared a musical program and remarks about what the gift of a Berklee music education means to them. Ensemble performers include: Naseem Alatrash, cello; Ali Amr, qanun, vocals; Utar Dundarartun, piano; Alex Gable, mandolin; Tyreek Jackson, bass; Maya Khaldi, vocals; Sergio Martinez, percussion; Ariadna Castellanos Pliago, piano; and Tareq Rantisi, percussion.

Speakers include Roger Brown, President of Berklee, and Adel Iskandar of Georgetown University and Co-Editor, Edward Said: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation (2010).

The Special Event is co-presented with:

  • The Middle East Center for Peace, Culture, and Development, Northeastern University
  • The International Affairs Program, Northeastern University
  • The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee of Massachusetts (ADCMA)
  • Musicians Without Borders

On Sunday November 13, BPFF presents an all-star Palestinian Hip Hop concert, the closing event of the festival’s university film series (see below for full details).

Themes | This year`s 5th anniversary festival program has a number of thematic threads, including:

  • The work of Elia Suleiman (The Time That Remains, Chronicle of a Disappearance, Divine Intervention)
  • Celebrating the legacy of the late Edward Said (our Special Event at Berklee College of Music, Knowledge is the Beginning, The Last Interview)
  • Homage to past and present revolutions in honor of the Arab Spring (We Are Egypt, Nasser 56, This is My Picture When I Was Dead, Gaza Hospital, We Were Communists, Genet in Chatila)
  • Challenging the status quo (77 Steps, Paradise Lost, Love During Wartime, Cultures of Resistance, My Land, and Breaking the Silence, among others), and
  • Women making movies (such as: Dahna Abourahme, Basma AlSharif, Gabriella Bier, Zeina Durra, Omaima Hamouri, Dara Khader, Raneen Jeries, Iara Lee, Ibtisam Mara`aneh, Nadine Naous, May Odeh, Lillie Paquette, Vanessa Rousselot, Jaqueline Salloum, Eti Tsicko)

Finally, this year`s program showcases a burgeoning number of young emerging filmmakers who are focusing their talents on Palestine-related narratives, such as: Dahna Abourahme, Taghreed al-Azza, Basma AlSharif, Zeina Durra, Amber Fares, Avi Goldstein, Omaima Hamouri, Suhel Nafer, May Odeh, Vanessa Rousselot, Jaqueline Salloum, and Sameh Zoabi, among others.

Guests | Distinguished invited guests are (in chronological order of appearance at the festival): Elia Suleiman (The Time That Remains, Chronicle of a Disappearance, and Divine Intervention); Roger Brown (Berklee concert); Adel Iskandar (speaker at The Last Interview and the Berklee concert); Lillie Paquette (We Are Egypt); Samir Abdallah (Gazastrophe); Ibstisam Mara’aneh (77 Steps, Paradise Lost); Rajie Cook (Pastports); Dahna Abourahme (The Kingdom of Women); Gabriella Bier (Love During Wartime); Osama Zatar (Love During Wartime); Zeina Durra (The Imperialists Are Still Alive!); and Sameh Zoabi (Man Without a Cell Phone).

The full program is available at www.bostonpalestinefilmfest.org.

Venues | In addition to our ticketed shows at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Berklee College of Music, eight shows are free and open to the public this year: two at the Cambridge Public Library’s Main Branch (Sunday, October 23 at 2 pm and Sunday, October 30 at 2 pm); two at the Brookline Public Library (Wednesday October 26 at 5:30 and 7 pm; and four at Harvard Law School (Monday, October 24 at 6 and 8 pm, and Tuesday, October 25 at 6 and 8:30 pm).

University film series | After the festival, in early November, we are facilitating film series at a number of area universities in conjunction with student groups. Participating universities include: Northeastern University; Boston University; University of Massachusetts-Boston; Brandeis University; MIT, and Roxbury Community College.

The university program culminates with a major series of hip hop events. Hip hop music is rapidly spreading across the Arab world as a means to fight oppression and demand social justice, alongside the Arab Spring. BPFF is proud to present Hip Hop is Bigger Than Occupation / Existence is Resistance (2011), a 90-minute documentary that chronicles a 10-day musical tour through Palestine to teach resistance through the arts. Staying in the heart of Balata Refugee Camp at the Yafa Cultural Center in Nablus, the group witnessed and experienced the day-to-day struggle of Palestinian life. Accompanying the filmmakers are acclaimed hip hop artists, including: M1 of Dead Prez, Lowkey, Shadia Mansour, Marcel Cartier, Mazzi of S.O.U.L. On November 13, BPFF presents a Palestinian Hip Hop All-Star Concert on at the Middle East Upstairs in Cambridge. Featured artists include DAM, Shadia Mansour, and Yusuf Abdul Mateen. A panel discussion with the artists will precede the concert.

About BPFF | Since 2007, the Boston Palestine Film Festival has been bringing Palestine-related cinema, narratives, and culture to New England audiences. The festival has featured hundreds of compelling and thought-provoking films, including documentaries, dramatic features, animated films, rare early works, video art pieces, and new films by emerging artists and youth. These works from directors around the world have offered refreshingly honest, self-described, and independent views of Palestine and its history, culture, and geographically dispersed society. 

BPFF was created to celebrate Palestinian cinema as a cultural and artistic production of a people in exile and under occupation and siege. BPFF also aims to reduce prejudice and discrimination against Middle Eastern people generally and Palestinians in particular in the United States, a critical effort in the post-9/11 world. We also aim to instill pride in our Arab-American community and to provide a link for Americans of Arab heritage back to their original culture. The organizing committee works year-round on a volunteer basis to sustain the festival.

BPFF is one of a proliferating number of Palestine film festivals worldwide. Others have been established in London, Toronto, Sydney Australia, Chicago, Houston, Ann Arbor, and the newest – opening this past September – in Washington DC.

Contact

Kristen Lauerman
617.369.3016
KLauerman@mfa.org
Web: www.bostonpalestinefilmfest.org

Salma Abu Ayyash
617.642.9640
pr@bostonpalestinefilmfest.org
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Jadaliyya Reports By :
Jadaliyya Reports

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412