The second annual Ann Arbor Palestine Film Festival opened on Wednesday, 10 March with the feature film Pomegranates and Myrrh. Such festivals are a growing phenomenon with new ones popping up throughout the United States. The Electronic Intifada contributor Jimmy Johnson spoke with festival organizers Hena Ashraf, Ryah Aqel, Lauren Thams and Pomegranates and Myrhh director Najwa Najjar. Read more about Interview: Education and resistance at the Ann Arbor Palestine film fest
The second annual Ann Arbor Palestine Film Festival opened on 10 March 2010 at the Michigan Theater with hundreds of attendees for Najwa Najjar’s Pomegranates and Myrrh. The film festival showcases films about Palestine and by Palestinian directors. Educating through the screen arts, the film festival amplifies the voice of the Palestinian people as a nation and diaspora by bringing films to the fore that would not otherwise be seen. Read more about Second annual Ann Arbor Palestine film fest opens with "Pomegranates and Myrrh"
Nazareth-born filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad is best known internationally for his 2005 film Paradise Now about two young, attractive Palestinian men from Nablus in the occupied West Bank who are drawn into a suicide bombing mission in Tel Aviv. It was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Foreign Language Film category. The Electronic Intifada contributor Sabah Haider spoke with Hany Abu Assad about how his films are received, Palestinian cinema and the challenges of filmmaking. Read more about "Palestinian cinema is a cause": an interview with Hany Abu-Assad
Palestinian-American author, journalist and editor of the Palestine Chronicle, Ramzy Baroud’s latest book My Father was a Freedom Fighter is an antidote to the US, European and Israeli media’s decontextualization and dehumanization of Palestinians. It’s also an instant classic, one of the very best books to have examined the Palestinian tragedy. Robin Yassin-Kassab reviews for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Refusal to surrender: "My Father was a Freedom Fighter" reviewed
Jennifer Jajeh’s critically acclaimed one-woman show, I Heart Hamas and Other Things I am Afraid to Tell You, pulls no punches. From a Ramallah Convention in San Francisco in the 1980s, to casting lines in contemporary Los Angeles, to the front lines of the Israeli occupation and back, Jajeh navigates the complicated and often conflicted terrain of Palestinian identity. The Electronic Intifada contributor Uda Olabarria Walker interviews Jajeh about her work. Read more about Pushing the boundaries of identity: an interview with Jennifer Jajeh
Ivor Dembina’s one-man show This is Not a Subject for Comedy has been running, growing and developing for more than five year, dealing with Dembina’s upbringing in a 1960s “mainstream Jewish household” broadly supporting the Zionist cause. Set to perform before the British House of Commons, Dembina was recently interviewed by The Electronic Intifada contributor Sarah Irving. Read more about "The ground is shifting": An interview with comedian Ivor Dembina
In his new book-length work of serial art journalism, Footnotes in Gaza, Joe Sacco seeks out the recollections of the remaining Palestinian witnesses and survivors of the November 1956 massacres at the Gaza refugee camps of Rafah and Khan Younis. The result is a powerful oral history — his research as detailed and meticulous as his crosshatched drawings, its 386 pages of sequential comic strip-style narration emotionally devastating. Maureen Clare Murphy reviews for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Book review: Joe Sacco draws life into history's "footnotes"
Emma Williams is a doctor who worked in Britain, Pakistan, Afghanistan, New York and South Africa before accompanying her husband, a UN official, to Jerusalem in October 2000. This account of their three years in Palestine, It’s easier to reach heaven than the end of the street - a Jerusalem memoir, was originally published in the UK in 2006 and now appears in a revised and updated US edition. Raymond Deane reviews for The Electronic Intifada Read more about Review: A (happily) partial memoir of the second intifada
Celebrated Iraqi musician Naseer Shamma plays emotive compositions in beautiful tones on the oud to major audiences across the Middle East, stirring musical reflections on human realities in US-occupied Iraq. Although Iraqi current affairs are clearly interwoven into Shamma’s sound, it is also unique musical talent that has earned Shamma a reputation as one of the world’s preeminent oud players. Stefan Christoff profiles Shamma for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Naseer Shamma and the music of resistance
Nazareth-born filmmaker Elia Suleiman is one of the darlings of Cannes and stands out from the pack of contemporary Palestinian filmmakers for his unique style of filmmaking based on sewing together a series vignettes, silence — an emphasis on visual storytelling versus dialogue, and deadpan comedy found in often grim humor in the lives of everyday people living under the tyranny of what he calls a “pathetic occupation.” Sabah Haider recently interviewed Suleiman for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about "A different kind of occupation": an interview with Elia Suleiman
