Arab Film News
Friday, April 8, 2011Mer-Khamis and binational resistance movement
Those who knew Juliano Mer-Khamis, the Nazareth-born actor and director who was shot in Jenin on Monday, will have to be the ones to write about him; all that the rest of us can do is write about the milestones in his life.
Juliano was lucky. He was born Palestinian and Jewish, Jewish and Palestinian. This angry man was beset by conflicting yet complementary identities. He was the long shadow of an imagined binational community from the 1950s. Like a Peter Pan who refuses to grow up, Juliano embodied the potential of a shared life (ta’ayush in Arabic ) while striving for equality. The son of a Jewish mother and a Palestinian father, he was born to two cultures, and chose to live in both. He saw no need to [...]
Monday, April 4, 2011
JULIANO MER-KHAMIS WAS MURDERED TODAY IN JENIN
MONDAY, APRIL 4, 2011 AT 3:20PM GILAD ATZMON
JULIANO MER-KHAMIS WAS MURDERED TODAY IN JENIN
Palestinian genius film maker, actor and political activist Juliano Mer-Khamis, 53, was shot dead on Monday in Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank.
According to Jenin police chief Mohammed Tayyim, Mer-Khamis was shot five times by Palestinian militants, but that police were still investigating the circumstances of his murder. I would wait to learn more about the tragic incident; as we know, the IDF trains special units that are operating disguised as Palestinians militants.
Mer-Khamis was well-known as an actor for his film and theater roles, both in Israel and abroad, and had made a name for himself as a director and a political activist, as well.
Mer-Khamis was affiliated with the local theater in Jenin, established by his mother in the 1980s. In 2006, Mer-Khamis opened the Freedom Theater in Jenin, along with Zakariya Zubeidi, the former military leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades in that West Bank city.
Mer-Khamis’ mother, Arna Mer, was an Israeli Jewish activist for Palestinian rights. His father, Saliba Khamis, was a Christian Palestinian. Mer-Khamis was born and raised in Nazareth.
Watch Mer-Khamis’ monumental Arna’s Children:
MONDAY, APRIL 4, 2011 AT 3:20PM GILAD ATZMON JULIANO MER-KHAMIS WAS MURDERED TODAY IN JENIN Palestinian genius film maker, actor and political activist Juliano Mer-Khamis, 53, was shot dead on Monday in Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. According to Jenin police chief Mohammed Tayyim, Mer-Khamis was shot five times by Palestinian militants, but [...]
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Rula Jebreal on the struggle to make “Miral” a film
Interview: Rula Jebreal on the struggle to make “Miral” a film
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 22 March 2011 (more…)
Rula Jebreal Miral, Julian Schnabel’s feature film set in Palestine and based on the autobiographical novel of the same name by author and journalist Rula Jebreal, will open in cinemas in ten major US cities starting with New York and Los Angeles on 25 March. As a young girl the title character, Miral, is sent into the care of Hind Husseini, the real-life founder of Dar al-Tifl, a home in Jerusalem which began as a refuge for children who survived the massacre by Zionist forces in the village of Deir Yassin. The narrative centers on the lives of four women: Husseini; Miral’s mother Nadia; Fatima, a Palestinian woman jailed for an attempted bombing of an Israeli cinema; and Miral herself growing up during the first intifada. Jebreal spoke to The Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah about her book, the struggle to make and show the film and the tumultuous real-life experiences behind the story.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
De Niro and Penn back Palestinian film at UN
Watch the trailer here: http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi1245944345/
De Niro and Penn back Palestinian film at UN
(AFP)
UNITED NATIONS — Sean Penn and Robert De Niro joined stars who appeared at the UN headquarters for the US premiere of a contested movie on the Middle East conflict that Israel tried to get cancelled.
Penn, De Niro, Josh Brolin and Steve Buscemi on Monday turned out to support award-winning American-Jewish director Julian Schnabel at the premiere of “Miral,” the story of two Palestinian women after the creation of Israel in 1948.
The Israeli mission to the UN had said that showing the movie in the UN General Assembly hall was “clearly a politicized decision” that “shows poor judgment and a lack of even-handedness.”
But UN General Assembly president Joseph Deiss of Switzerland turned down the Israeli request to cancel the event. A spokesman said Deiss hoped that showing the film would “contribute” to a settlement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Schnabel, who was awarded the best director at Cannes in 2007 for “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” praised the UN decision at the start of the film and called his film a “cry for peace.”
The film, with Indian actress Freida Pinto of “Slumdog Millionaire” fame in the lead role, is based on an autobiographical novel by Palestinian journalist Rula Jebreal that traces the Arab-Israeli from a Palestinian perspective.
Like Jebreal, the lead character Miral grows up in an orphanage in East Jerusalem set up by a socialite from a wealthy Palestinian family, who one morning in 1948 came across 55 children who escaped a village taken over by radical Jewish militants.
Adapted with the author, Schnabel’s film traces the lives of the two women from the
establishment of the orphanage until the Oslo peace accords of 1993.
Original article can be found here.
Watch the trailer here: http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi1245944345/ De Niro and Penn back Palestinian film at UN (AFP) UNITED NATIONS — Sean Penn and Robert De Niro joined stars who appeared at the UN headquarters for the US premiere of a contested movie on the Middle East conflict that Israel tried to get cancelled. Penn, De Niro, Josh [...]
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Winner announced for this year’s “Prix Bouanani” for Morocco’s “Festival du Cinema Universitaire”
By Sally Shafto
Professeur Habilité
l’Université Ibn Zohr
The Festival du Cinéma Universitaire in Errachidia, Morocco (March 16 – 20, 2011) has just announced that Rachid Ait Abdellah Ouali and Zakaria Bati won this year’s Prix Bouânani for their documentary entitled Les Oubliés/The Forgotten Ones (2010, 12’). Five documentaries produced in Moroccan universities were in the running for the sixth edition of the Festival du Cinéma Universitaire. The festival also included a posthumous homage to the Moroccan writer and filmmaker, Ahmed Bouânani who died earlier this year at the age of 73 and for whom the top prize is named(…)
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Why can’t Jews handle ‘Miral’?
Maybe it’s the simple fact that a high-profile film written by a Palestinian is cause enough for Jewish opprobrium. Maybe it’s because the director of the film, Julian Schnabel, is Jewish, and his commitment to any perspective other than the dominant Jewish paradigm is akin to tribal and national betrayal. Maybe it’s because the distributor of the film, Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein was reared and raised a New York Jew and should know better – haven’t the Jews and their State of Israel had it hard enough?
Friday, March 11, 2011
Rating for “Miral” goes from R to PG-13
The kids can see “Miral” after all.
Julian Schnabel’s historical piece about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has had its rating downgraded from an R to a PG-13 after an appeal from distributor the Weinstein Co.
A person familiar with the appeal who was not authorized to speak about it said the debate turned on an early moment in the film when a middle-aged man assaults a young girl at her home; the assault is strongly implied but occurs out of the frame of the movie. It’s a dramatically important scene, setting in motion a critical chain of events for one of the main characters.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Miral Fights an R Rating in a Difficult Political Climate
Miral fights an R rating in a difficult political climate
Mar 10, 2011 09:44 am | Adam Horowitz
The filmmakers behind Miral are finally preparing for its March 25th release and are now having to fight with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) over a possible R rating. This would not only hurt the film’s commercial chances, but also keep it from one of its intended audiences – young people like the protagonist Miral.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Master of documentary Cinema, Arab-Lebanese filmmaker Omar Amiralay passes at 67
Farewell, Omar Amiralay
February 6th, 2011 (more…)
The Arab film world and beyond was stunned yesterday by the untimely passing of Omar Amiralay, the master of documentary cinema. He was only 67 years old.
Born in Damascus in 1944 to the son of a high-ranking officer in the Ottoman military and a Lebanese mother, Omar Amiralay headed to Paris in 1965 to pursue studies in drama and theater at the Théâtre des Nations. Gradually he began to lean towards cinema and enrolled at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinématographiques, or IDHEC (now known as FEMIS) in 1967. He was deeply suspicious of fiction cinema, and after a year at the institute he began to question whether film was really his vocation. When the 1968 student revolt erupted, Amiralay joined the hordes of protestors, and began to film. His fate was sealed; he never returned to the IDHEC and instead began to make documentary films.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Middle East America Distinguished Playwright Award Winner
Seattle-based playwright Yussef El Guindi¸ author of numerous plays including Our Enemies (Osborn Award), Back of the Throat and Jihad Jones and the Kalashnikov Babes, has been selected to receive the 2010 Middle East America Distinguished Playwright Award. Honorable mentions went to playwrights Nastaran Ahmadi, Denmo Ibrahim, Ken Kaisser, Mona Mansour, and Heather Raffo.
