Reviews

Film Review: "Last Supper (Abu Dis)"

Maymanah Farhat 19 May 2006


Issa Freij and Nicolas Wadimoff’s documentary Last Supper (Abu Dis) examines a Palestinian village on the outskirts of Jerusalem that is slowly being enclosed by the Israeli apartheid wall. The twenty-six minute film exposes the violations of human rights that are resulting from the supposed “security” measurements the Israeli government has taken over the past six years. As the wall expands, Palestinians continue to be cut off from their communities, land, farms, families and social infrastructures. 

Film Review: The Chicago Palestine Film Festival's Evening of Shorts

Maymanah Farhat 11 May 2006


Rina Khoury’s West…East, is a nine minute narrative film about the Palestinian catastrophe that is told through the journey of a blind woman and her son, amidst an ambiguous landscape. Enas Muthaffar’s East…West is a sixteen minute documentary film that chronicles her family’s expulsion from their home as the apartheid wall encroaches nearby and threatens to segregate them from their community. Both films were shown in conjunction with two short films by Annemarie Jacir, Some Crumbs for the Birds and An Explanation (and then burn the ashes). 

Film Review: Rashid Masharawi's "Waiting"

Ali Abunimah 8 May 2006


A young woman stands before a camera refusing to take the chair the director has set up. He asks why? “I have come to sing,” she says. Irritated, the director orders her, “You must act, didn’t they tell you we are looking for actors here?” With calm assertion she insists, “I do not know how to act. I have come to sing. Come on, you film and I will sing…” This scene illustrates a main theme running through Rashid Masharawi’s latest feature film Waiting: Palestinians forced to speak from someone else’s script, writes Electronic Intifada co-founder Ali Abunimah in this review of Masharawi’s latest feature which had its Chicago premiere at the Chicago Palestine Film Festival 2006. 

Review: "The Wall and the Checkpoints"

Maureen Clare Murphy 24 April 2006


In the near future, it would be worth doing a follow-up exhibition to The Wall and the Checkpoints, recently shown at the Darat al Funun in Amman, Jordan, which featured Palestinian artists’ work on that theme. To the individual fresh from the borders and checkpoints of the occupied Palestinian territories, the artwork already begs to be updated, for Israel’s grip there is becoming that more tight. Indeed, it is this timeliness that gives the work a sense of urgency. 

Book Review: American author's debut novel, "The Woman I Left Behind"

Maureen Clare Murphy 9 April 2006


Khalid and Irene are like two tectonic plates - when friction arises between them, their relationship is shaken to its core. Coming from two separate experiences - American Irene, who lived a privileged East Coast childhood, and Palestinian Khalid, who lost nearly all of the significant people in his life to war — the two come together with great passion that later gives way to uncertainty and distrust, shaking their faith in each other. Their rocky journey towards mutual trust is at the center of Kim Jensen’s debut novel The Woman I Left Behind. 

Theatre Review: My Name Is Rachel Corrie

Cindy Corrie and Craig Corrie 11 October 2005


When our daughter Rachel Corrie was killed by an Israeli bulldozer in the Gaza Strip on March 16 2003, an immediate impulse was to get her words out to the world. We realised that her words were having a similar effect on others whose lives were being changed. Earlier this year, when a play created entirely from Rachel’s emails and journals first opened in London, we saw in a very immediate way the impact that Rachel’s words can have on others. It is disturbing to see our daughter played on stage, but it drives home the impact she has had since her killing in Gaza. 

Film review: "Just Married" divorced from the bigger picture

Maureen Clare Murphy 29 September 2005


The theme of Just Married is Israel’s discriminatory family reunification process, which has been frozen since 2003. Because no unification applications are currently being accepted, Palestinians from the occupied West Bank (excluding Jerusalem, which Israel illegally annexed in 1967) and Gaza Strip who marry Israeli citizens or residents are unable to legally live with their spouses in Israel or occupied East Jerusalem. However, as it the film focuses on just two newly-married couples and the problems they face, the magnitude of the problem is unclear to the viewer, as is Israel’s motivations behind the freezing of the process. 

Film review: "Private"

Arjan El Fassed 26 July 2005


Winner of a Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival (Best Film) and Bronze Leopord (for Mohammad Bakri’s performance), “Private” is a thought provoking, psychological drama, based on real events. Mohammad, played by famous Palestinian actor Mohammad Bakri is a Palestinian teacher and active pacifist. He lives with his family in a home located in an area between a Palestinian village and Israeli settlements. His wife Samia (Areen Omari) feels unsafe in these surroundings and would like to move, but Mohammad’s pride does not allow him and his middle class family to be labeled with the status of refugee. He decides to stay. 

Film review: "The Syrian Bride" makes for a difficult marriage

Jonathan Cook 21 July 2005


“Maybe I should learn to be less sensitive but when director Eran Riklis arrived in Nazareth last month for the screening of his much-garlanded film ‘The Syrian Bride’, he got off on the wrong footing the moment he walked through the door,” writes EI contributor Jonathan Cook. The film, produced with Israeli, Palestinian and Syrian actors is set in a tiny Druze community in the Golan Heights, part of Syria occupied by Israel since 1967. The only contact the Israeli and Syrian authorities allow is the occasional passage of brides across the ceasefire line. While the film tries to break boundaries, Cook says, it also reveals others that the director failed to see. 

Book review: "The One-State Solution"

Iqbal Jassat 16 July 2005


As Israel’s apartheid wall colonizes 30-40 percent more of the 22 percent of Palestine that remains, an increasing number of analysts, activists, and academics have begun to challenge the two-state solution designed to bring an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. With Palestinians eventually ending up with only 12-15 percent of their land, made up of disjointed ghettoes over which they will have no sovereignty- a single, secular polity that would encompass both Israel and the Occupied Territories is looking increasingly attractive. The One-State Solution written by Virginia Tilley, associate professor of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, lucidly demonstrates why the two-state model “is an idea whose time has passed”.