For more on Palestinian cinema (i.e. cinema by Palestinian filmmakers,
not necessary just about Palestinian issues) colleagues may wish to
look up:
http://www.dreamsofanation.org
best,
KR
Quoting Dan Garrett <[log in to unmask]>:
> Saverio Costanzo’s Private, on Palestinian-Israeli relations (via
> The CompulsiveReader.com)
>
> Private, directed by Saverio Costanzo. It is a haunting film, but
> instead of fear it brings hope, not for what it shows but for the
> fact that it shows it. Honest, intense, an act of consciousness and
> imagination, it brings color and sound where there was little.
> Private, about the take-over of a Palestinian home by Israeli
> soldiers, is a motion picture shot on color video, and featuring
> Arabic, English, and Hebrew, with English subtitles, and written by
> the director Saverio Costanzo, with Camilla Costanzo, Alessio
> Cremonini, and Sayed Oashua. The cinematographer is Luigi
> Martinucci; and the production designers are Ludovica Amati, and
> Einat Fadida. They have created a view of Palestine, a country that
> is there and not there, past and future, remembered and forgotten,
> loved and hated.…Private is set in a place that borders the
> Palestinian territories and Israel but, because of fears of
> threatened safety, it was not filmed in the Palestinian territories
> or in Israel but in Calabria, Italy. The landscape is evocative; and
> the situations, and the feelings, are real. In Private, the family
> whose home is taken over is in a state of crisis; and it is a crisis
> that becomes daily life. The cast of characters includes a father
> and a mother and their children of various ages, a woman neighbor,
> and Israeli soldiers. The actors featured include Mohammad Bakri,
> Areen Omari, Hend Ayoub, Karem Emad Hassan Aly, Lior Miller, and
> Tomer Russo. Private’s subject, Palestinian-Israeli relations, and
> its theme, the unfair difficulty of that relationship, and its
> story, the invasion of one family’s home, which is also a metaphor
> at once ordinary and resonant, are presented with believable
> characters, spoken lines, and actions, creating a dramatic
> atmosphere, proving the effective novelty of the work’s approach.
> Bakri plays the father, an educator, for whom what happens is a test
> of his commitment to reason and civility: and he insists the family
> remain in their home, as part of a non-violent protest, and to
> maintain their property and to keep his children’s heritage and
> respect. It’s probable that the most significant purpose of all
> human efforts is the increasing and sharing of human understanding
> and, possibly, consequently, ethics and skill in living. I think
> that Private contributes to that.
>
> http://www.compulsivereader.com/html/index.php?
> name=News&file=article&sid=1277
>
> Alain Resnaiss film Night and Fog (via TheCompulsiveReader.com):
>
> Night and Fog, finished ten years after the end of the twentieth
> century’s second world war, in 1955, presents facts too terrible for
> tears: a view of the Nazi death camps as man-made cruelty augmented
> by modern technology and utilitarian purpose, and also as a human
> tragedy of mystery and perplexing dimension. It reminds us of the
> many different peoples—the film gives the number of nine million
> persons—of different countries and religions killed as a result of
> the policies and the war initiated by the government of Adolph
> Hitler and the National Socialists German Workers Party (the Nazis)…
> I watched Night and Fog and kept thinking, “This is a human
> atrocity. This is a human tragedy. This is a human crime. This is
> for us all to remember, for us all to be wary of its occurring again—
> and for us all to recognize when it does occur, whether in Europe,
> Africa, Asia, or elsewhere.” Does making the holocaust into a Jewish
> story concentrate and consecrate Jews as different from the rest of
> us? Isn’t that a corroboration of Hitler, and not a repudiation of
> prejudice? Isn’t that always the danger in seeing identity as
> essence and fate? Is the emphasis on various forms of social
> identity—whether attached to religion, nationality, skin, gender, or
> sexuality—something that can only obscure a broader, deeper human
> identity?
>
> http://www.compulsivereader.com/html/index.php?
> name=News&file=article&sid=1221
>
> Heather Rae's Trudell (via TheCompulsiveReader.com):
>
> Every culture has its rebels, every culture has its wise people, and
> for Native Americans the two are one in John Trudell. Political
> history and personal tragedy seem to have applied the pressure that
> produced this rough diamond: he is hard, rare, sharp, and immensely
> valuable, something attested to by his comrades, friends, and family—
> among them, Gary Farmer, Wilma Mankiller, Jackson Browne, Bonnie
> Raitt, Robert Redford, and Val Kilmer—featured in the documentary,
> Trudell, directed and produced by Heather Rae, a Cherokee who worked
> on the project for more than ten years.
>
> http://www.compulsivereader.com/html/index.php?
> name=News&file=article&sid=1197
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
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