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FIRST EVER ARABIC BOOK FAIR TO TAKE PLACE IN LONDON IN APRIL

  The Arabic Book Fair will be open to the public for one day only - Sunday 13 th April, 10.30am ? 5.00 pm, at the Royal College of Art, Kensington, London. select this link for more information .    

THE LONDON PALESTINE FILM FESTIVAL


Friday 18 to Thursday 24 April 2008
www.palestinefilm.org  
 www.barbican.org.uk/film    Box Office: 0845 120 7530
The London Palestine Film Festival returns to the Barbican in April with another extraordinary selection of documentary, fiction, art, and experimental work by artists from around the world. Still the largest of its kind, the festival in 2008 will showcase 46 films which engage with a broad range of artistic, academic and political issues surrounding Palestine today.
 
For 2008, the 60th anniversary year of the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948, the festival opens on Friday 18 April with a special screening of The Nabka on Film and a live discussion dedicated to heritage, refugee rights, and the role of video oral history documentation.
 
Also reflecting this anniversary, Homeland Lost, a photographic exhibition by Alan Gignoux, will open on Friday 18 March in the Barbican Cinema 1 Foyer1. Juxtaposing portraits of Palestinian exiles with present day images of the places they left in 1948 as a result of the war that led to the creation of Israel, Gignoux?s work provides an antidote to a western media saturated with images of exiled Palestinians as either extremists or victims, portraying instead individuals trying to build a life for themselves in complex circumstances.
 
The film festival then continues until Thursday 24 April with highlights including a special session on Palestinian labourers in the Israeli construction industry; a Q&A with leading UK rights lawyer Gareth Peirce; and a special double-bill on Lebanon, summer 2006 with a Q&A from directors Mai Masri & Katia Saleh. Following its run at the Barbican, the festival continues at SOAS from 25 April to 1 May.
 
  Cont. PROGRAMME:
Friday 18th April
7.00pm - The Nakba on Film: Documentation, Memory and Return
This year?s festival opens with a special screening of two films exploring the Palestinian Nakba:   A Collection of Testimonies from the Nakba Archive (Lebanon Dirs. Diana Allan & Mahmoud Zeidan 40 mins) and Women?s Testimonies of the Nakba (Dir. Raneen Geries 10 mins). These screenings will be followed by a panel discussion on memory, heritage, refugee rights, and the role of video oral history documentation, chaired Ilan Pappé with the participation of Karma Nabulsi, Raneen Geries, Mahmoud Zeidan and Diana Allan. Repeated Saturday 19 April, 5.00pm.

Saturday 19 April
3.00pm ? The Zoo (2005 Dir. Hayden Campbell 43 min)
A truly unique look at life in the West Bank through the eyes of Palestine?s only zookeeper?veterinarian?taxidermist, Dr Sami Khader of Qalqilya Zoo. Fifteen kilometers from the outskirts of Tel Aviv, the zoo has been hard hit by army raids, making international television news when its zebras succumbed to tear gas. Now Dr Sami is on a torturous mission to rescue two baboons from a run-down facility in Nablus, against the absurd bureaucracy and checkpoint subterfuge that follows. The Zoo makes for hilarious, heartbreaking, and infuriating viewing.  
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The First Picture (2006 Dir. Akram Al Ashqar 27 min)
Nour was born in Israel?s Telmond prison, where his refugee mother was being held. Following Nour on his release, this debut documentary charts his first encounters with life outside the prison as he tries to assimilate himself back into the world, revealing perhaps the most difficult aspect of all; the fact that Nour misses his birthplace, his mother?s cell.      
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Tunnel Trade (2007 Dirs. Laila El-Haddad & Saeed Taji 22min)
An exclusive look inside the network of tunnels running beneath the wall along Gaza?a southern border with Egypt which forced Palestinian trade quite literally underground when Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula in 1982. Tunnel Trade explores how a handful of individuals from Rafah have gone underground to achieve what politics otherwise makes impossible.
 
Saturday 19 April
8.00pm ? Tension (1998 Dir. Rashid Masharawi 26 min)
Eschewing spoken dialogue altogether for a narrative that is produced through the editing of images, music, and incidental sounds, Masharawi?s documentary follows the cycle of Palestinian day workers who labour in Israel and return each evening. Conveying the palpable sense of tension bubbling below the surface of daily life for Palestinians during the peace process.
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Measures of Distance (1988 Dir. Mona Hatoum 15min)
An experimental work from one of Palestine?s most celebrated artists tracing a mother-daughter relationship across time, over geographical and cultural distance.
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SBARA (2008 Dir. Larissa Sansour 9min)
Heavily referencing the 1980 cult classic The Shining by Stanley Kubrick, the video piece SBARA explores the castigation of Arabs in contemporary Western dialogue.
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The Shooter (2007 Dir. Ihab Jadallah 8min)
Exploring questions of violence, stereotypes, conflict, and consumer-media from the perspective of a new generation of aspiring artists based in Palestine.
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Around (2007 Mohanad Yaqubi 3min)
A journey with four young filmmakers in a blue Fiat Uno as they make their way from Jenin to Ramallah to have their favourite pizza.
 
Sunday 20 April
2.00pm - USA Vs Al- Arian (2007 Dir. Line Halvorsen 99 min) plus Q&A with leading UK rights lawyer Gareth Peirce chaired by Asad Rehman
 In 2003, Sami Al-Arian was accused of supporting to a terrorist organization and was held in solitary confinement for over three years under the Patriot Act, passed hastily after 9/11. Al-Arian?s six-month trial ended without a single guilty verdict but the university professor, a US resident for over 30 years remained in jail as his family fought to prove his innocence. USA vs Al-Arian will be followed by a Q & A session with the UK?s leading rights lawyer, Gareth Peirce, who will discuss her work with victims of miscarriages of justice, and defence of the right to due process of political and security detainees in the UK as well as abroad.
 
Sunday 20 April
5.00pm ? Special Double-Bill: Lebanon, Summer 2006 plus Q&A with directors Mai Masri & Katia Saleh
33 Days (2007 Dir. Mai Masri 70 min)
Filmed in Lebanon during the summer of 2006, 33 Days follows the real-life stories of four people as Israel?s Second Lebanon War is waged around them: a director working with children who take shelter in a theatre; a journalist for an underground television station; an aid worker coordinating emergency relief efforts; and a news-desk director trying to cope not only with the war, but with her new-born baby. Renowned Palestinian director Masri?s award-winning film is full of compassion and humanity.
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Organised Chaos (Dir. Katia Saleh, 23 min)
Beirut-born filmmaker Saleh was caught in Beirut during the month long conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in July 2006 and documented the day-to-day effects of the war on the people around her. Saleh returned to Lebanon in 2007 to find not only physical destruction but also a population struggling with daily instability and a country in a state of political turmoil.
 
Sunday 20 April
8.00pm - Notre Musique (2004 Dir. Jean-Luc Godard 80 min)
Part poetry, part journalism, part philosophy, Jean-Luc Godard?s Notre Musique is a timeless meditation on war as seen through the prisms of cinema, text and image. Largely set at a literary conference in Sarajevo, the film draws on the conflagration of the Bosnian war, but also draws on the Israel-Palestine conflict, the brutal treatment of Native Americans, and the legacy of the Nazis.
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Channel Al Duwara (2007 Dir. Ariel Mioduser 10 min)
Based on the history of Al Duwara, a Palestinian village depopulated and destroyed in 1948 with the foundation of the state of Israel and the myth that surrounds it.
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Rico in the Night (2007 Dir. Mohanad Al-Yaqubi 8 min)
A short video-art collaboration between Yaqubi and French dancer-choreographer Jean Gaudin.
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Untitled Part 3b: (as if) Beauty Never Ends  (Jayce Salloum 11 minutes)
Working directly as well as metaphorically, this video art short by Lebanese artist Salloum provides an elegiac response to the Palestinian dispossession.
 
Monday 21 April
6.15pm- Return to Haifa (1982 Dir. Kassem Hawal 82 min)
Kasem Hawal?s adaptation of the Ghassan Kanafani novella is a rarely-seen gem. This seminal allegorical story tells of Safia and Saeed, who are forced to leave their 5-month old son Khaldoun in the city of Haifa when they are expelled in April 1948. Twenty years on, after the 1967 war and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the couple travel back to Haifa and discover that Khaldoun was adopted by Jewish immigrants. Now 20, he has recently enlisted in the Israeli army, raising questions of his heritage both in terms of his family and his homeland.
 
Monday 21 April
8.30pm ? Special Session on Palestinian Labourers In The Israeli Settlement-Construction Industry
9 Star Hotel (2006 Dir. Ido Haar 78 min)
In the West Bank, thousands of Palestinians are compelled by economic necessity to work illegally as construction labourers, building Israel?s settlements and cities. It?s an arduous and dangerous journey, across the hills to find employment and the labourers in improvised huts and coffin-like sleeping cubicles, a stark contrast to the luxury apartment complexes they build by day. 9 Star Hotel follows co-workers Ahmed and Muhammad as they share life as illegal workers under the constant threat of arrest.
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In Working Progress (2006 Dirs. Alexandre Goetschmann & Guy Davidi 30min)
In the early hours of the morning, construction workers from a neighbouring Palestinian set of for work at a new city settlement. Unemployed since the early days of the Second Intifada and drowning in debts, these men are forced to work against their own conscience on a settlement expanding into their own village. This inner struggle of the workers remains silent given the awful paradox of their situation as they work to sustain their impoverished families by allowing the construction of the settlements and the wall which will destroy their children?s future.
 
Tuesday 22 April
6.15pm ? Territories (2007 Dir. Mary Ellen Davis, 65 min)
Larry Towell is the only Canadian member of the legendary Magnum Photos agency, known for its humanist images showing conflict at an intimate level, which is Towell?s speciality. Territories reveals the artist and the man through his photographic work and his open meditations on life and the creative process over locations including the Occupied Palestinian Territories (West Bank and East Jerusalem); the border between Mexico and the US; New York, and Canada. Towell?s breathtaking images are bound together in this work by multiple notions of territory ? forbidden territories, occupied territories, creative territories, and territories of refuge.
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A Day in Palestine (2007 Dir. Mary Ellen David, José Garcia-Lozano & Will Eizlini 6 min)
Scenes of everyday life in the occupied Palestinian territories, using a dream-like visual language which evokes memories of home-movies from the 1960s
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Meet Me Out of the Siege (2007 Dir. Jessica Harbie 13 min)
Unravels the stories of two leading Palestinian artists living in exile in Paris.
 
Tuesday 22 April
8.30pm ? Palestine in Fragments (2007 Dir. Dominique Dobosc 85  min) plus Q&A with director Dominique Dobosc chaired by Mike Dibb
 A unique and unforgettable meditation which disrupts any separation between art and documentary filmmaking from the first frame. Using stills, video, landscapes and interviews shot between 2001 and 2007, Dobosc has assembled a series of impressionistic studies of unusual spaces and structures observed in the occupied Palestinian territories, coupled with informal interviews presenting the narratives of Palestinians in the West Bank A striking work by an important artist.    
 
Wednesday 23 April
6.00pm ? Palestines (2007 Dirs. Etienne Beurier, Thomas Ellis & Constantin Simon 52 min)
An intersecting triptych-portrait of the daily lives of three Palestinians in the West Bank. Ahmad, born in the Fara?a refugee camp, paints landscapes on walls; Raed is a traffic policeman in the busy centre of Ramalla; and Nidal, is a shopkeeper in Hebron. Three Palestinians who take their daily jobs into extraordinary places in the face of challenging situations ? these warm portraits of ordinary Palestinians invite the viewer into the remarkable day to day of Palestine, 2007 as seen by three young French filmmakers.
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Land Confiscation Order 06/24/T (Dir. Larissa Sansour 11 min)
Denmark-based Palestinian video artist Larissa Sansour explores the notion of territory as constitutive of not only national, but also personal identity
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25 Kilometers (Dir. Nahed Awwad 15min)
A journey through the checkpoints and rocky roads of the West Bank.
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Occupazion (Dir. Enas Muthaffar 10min)
Muthaffar?s collaboration with French dancer-choreographer Jean Gaudin takes as its starting point the (in)famous Balfour Declaration of 1917.
 
Wednesday 23 April
7.45pm ? A Grin Without a Cat: Scenes from the Third World War, 1967-1977 (1977 Dir. Chris Marker 180min)
Chris Marker?s epic three-hour elegy to the ?New Left? which captivated the world?s revolutionary imagination from the late1960s is a rarely screened but legendary work of European political cinema. Beginning with Vietnam and ending with Allende, it shows startling footage of momentous events in the struggles of the global Left from 1967 to 1977, and asks what it was that led so much promise and energy to achieve so little. On the 40th anniversary of the May 1968 events in France, the PFF is delighted to be able to screen this important essay on the global Left and its waning fortunes.
 
Thursday 24 April
6.15pm ? The Dupes (Dir. Tawfik Saleh 107 min) plus introduction by Sabri Hafez
 Based on Palestinian author Ghassan Kanafani?s novella Men Under the Sun ,
this stark black and white film traces the destinies of three Palestinian refugees brought together by dispossession and hope for a better future. The setting is Iraq in the 1950?s and the protagonists, concealed in the steel tank of a truck, are trying to make their way across the border into Kuwait. The Dupes is one of the first Arab films to directly address the Palestinian predicament and remains today a landmark film and a political call to action.
 
Thursday 24 April
8.30pm - Genet in Chatila (Dir. Richard Dino 98min) plus introduction by Ahdaf
Soueif

A documentary-meditation on Jean Genet's experiences of the Palestinian revolution in Lebanon and Jordan in the early and mid-1970s, and again in 1982, when the aging author returned to Beirut and witnessed the immediate aftermath of the Sabra and Chatila massacre, which compelled Genet to start writing after 20 years of reticence. The pages Genet worked on in Beirut were to grow into Prisoner of Love , his last book, from which Dino's work takes its cue. This is a poetic political film which articulates Genet?s aesthetics of resistance and revolution while asking what remains of a revolution unfinished.
                   
Notes for Editors:
 
1.      Homeland Lost has been curated for the Barbican by Jenny Christensson and is presented in association with Nakba60
2.     The London Palestine Film Festival is organised by Palestine Film Foundation in cooperation with the Barbican.
Tickets:
£7.50 / £5.00 members and concs.
 
For further information please contact: Sarah Harvey at Sarah Harvey Publicity on 020 7703 2253 / press@sarahharvey.info On 24th April 2008 , MEND UK presents ³Rhythms of Palestine²: An evening in celebration of Palestinian Music and Culture, featuring acclaimed Palestinian singer and Oud player, Marwan Abado with Austrian Peter Rosmanith; and the ?Ambassador for Arab music in the West¹, Adel Salameh with Naziha Azzouz. The evening will be a celebration of the music and culture of Palestine, and the Middle East, bringing this truly beautiful heritage to new people, as well as the Palestinian and wider communities of London, and supporters and lovers of world music from all over the south-east. This is not a political rally but an evening of music.  

May 2008

ILA HAIFA

ILA HAIFA by Ghassan Kanafani   Thursday 8th, Friday the 9th and Saturday the 10th of May 2008 An adaptation of Ghassan Kanafani's Returning to Haifa to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the Nakba (1948 Palestinian Catastrophe). At the Green Wood Theatre, Weston Street, London SE1 3RA Tickets:  Advance Booking: Adults: £15, conc: £12  // On the door: Adults: £17, Conc: £15  

10th May National Demonstration

In central London to commemorate the Nakba and continuing dispossession and denial of Palestinian rights.     MAP is a Charitable Company Limited by Guarantee. Registered Number 3038352 England. Charity Registration No. 1045315. Website Terms and Conditions

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