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A young Palestinian girl will do whatever it takes to buy a birthday cake. Eleven year-old Mariam begs her mother for the extra money she needs to buy a cake at the local bakery. Her mother begrudgingly relents, but when Mariam arrives at the bakery, she realizes that she still doesn’t have enough. Determined to get the cake, she sets out to brave the obstacles and land some cash. What begins as a simple trip to the bakery turns into a journey that depicts not only the subtle tensions of a politically charged environment, but also illustrates the grief that can result from growing up under occupation.
Salt Of This Sea (Michigan Premiere) Salt of this Sea marks the acting debut of Palestinian American Def Jam poet Suheir Hammad. Directed by acclaimed Palestinian Director Annemarie Jacir this powerful film was an official selection at the world famous Cannes Film Festival. It tells the story of a Palestinian Americans first visit to her ancestral home, and her powerful reaction to the reality of her homeland. |
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Michigan Theater 603 E Liberty St |
8 pm Thursday, March 12
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A Day In Palestine An impressionistic piece assembled from footage of everyday Palestinian life: families must surmount an enormous concrete barrier; an old woman is harassed on her land by soldiers. The home-movie style of the film lends it a deceptively nostalgic beauty.
Laila's Birthday Rashid Masharawi's film Laila's Birthday is a bittersweet story of ordinary people living in impossible circumstances. After turning to taxi-driving to earn a living, former Judge Abu Laila is tasked with getting his daughter a birthday cake. The chaos that follows this seemingly simple task shows the absurd difficulty of life under occupation. Selected for the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival.
Driving To Zigzigland A funny but poignant film, Driving to Zigzigland was shot in Jerusalem, Ramallah, and L.A. and is based on true stories. It depicts the everyday life of Bashar, a Palestinian man who comes to L.A. with dreams of stardom. Instead, to make ends meet he drives a cab, which becomes the set for a great portion of the film. This film presents the difficulties of life as a Palestinian in America in humorous yet powerful fashion.
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University of Michigan Natural Science Auditorium 830 N University Ave |
8 pm Friday, March 13
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By secretly snapping photos of Londoners wearing the popular Palestinian scarf, the "Kuffiyyah", the filmmaker ponders how her Palestinian grandparents would react if they could witness their scarf's almost ironic commercial appeal. The film opens up questions about the commodification and appropriation of political, cultural and historical materials and leaves the viewer to reflect on the interplay between commerce, fashion, ideology and identity.
Through the eyes of an old man living in the Shufat refugee camp and his dreams of growing up as a young boy in his displaced village, the film discusses Palestinian refugees’ right to return to their homeland. The film was produced during the Digital Storytelling Workshop conducted by Voices Beyond Walls in the Shufat Refugee Camp in East Jerusalem in August 2008. Voices Beyond Walls (VBW) is a nonprofit participatory media initiative that supports creative expression and advocacy among Palestinian youth in refugee camps, through digital storytelling workshops, new media production, and global dissemination of their work.
Carried By The Wind Music knows no boundaries. In Bethlehem, Merlijn Twaalfhoven and partners create a spectacular music performance from atop rooftops and balconies, across the Separation Wall that now divides this holy town. Uniting 75 professional & amateur musicians from Ramallah and Bethlehem with children from Palestinian West Bank refugee camps, the project culminates in a performance across the Wall. |
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Michigan League Ballroom (ArabXpressions) 911 N University Ave |
2pm Saturday, March 14
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In 1969 Palestinian Leila Khaled made history by becoming the first woman to hijack an airplane. As a Palestinian child growing up in Sweden, filmmaker Lina Makboul admired Khaled for her bold actions; as an adult, she began asking complex questions about the legacy created by her childhood hero. This fascinating documentary is at once a portrait of Khaled, an exploration of the filmmaker’s own understanding of her Palestinian identity, and a complicated examination of the nebulous dichotomy between "terrorist" and "freedom fighter."
A unique and unforgettable meditation which disrupts any separation between art and documentary filmmaking from the first frame and continues to surprise throughout. Using images (stills, video, landscapes, interviews, architectures) shot between 2001 and 2007, the director assembles a series of chapters which move between impressionistic studies of unusual spaces and structures observed in the occupied Palestinian territories, to informal interviews in which the narratives of Palestinians in the West Bank are presented unadorned.
Sakhnin is a small Arab town inside Israel where life is far from normal. Despite hardships, Sakhnin, like the rest of the world, is mad about football and has produced an edgy, hungry football team that managed, against all odds, to win Israel's national cup in 2004. As the drama of the new football season unfolds, Hardball reveals why the underdog team has attracted such a devoted and fervent following among thousands of Arab fans across the country. |
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Rackham Auditorium 915 E Washington St |
closing night
8pm Saturday, March 14 |
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Slideshow images of abandoned homes and emptied out public spaces carries along the story of two girls who find themselves in a kind of pre-apocalyptic paradise. Inspired by a massacre that took place in Gaza in July of 2006, Everywhere was the Same retells this event through the many voices that have come to speak about Palestinians and the occupation. Most importantly, a speech by Dr. Haidar Abdel Shafi at the Madrid Peace talks emerges as a voice of reason silenced in the film by unresolved, melancholic nostalgia.
This video is based on the song of the same name by Invincible featuring, Abeer, Suhell Nafar (DAM), and Shadia Mansour, which takes the listener on a journey through a "birthright" tour of Israel where the buried Palestinian significance of each location comes to light. Along the route the video exposes the process of historic and continued colonization as being even deeper than land seizure and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, but one that is invested in erasing the indigenous language, culture, and memory. Slingshot Hip Hop Slingshot Hip Hop, the brainchild of Jackie Salloum, tells the stories of young Palestinian hip hop artists within Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank. The film showcases all of the artists in their own struggles as Palestinians, as hip hop artists, and first and foremost, human beings. |
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Rackham Auditorium 915 E Washington St |
