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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:

Arna’s Children

Interview: Rula Jebreal on the struggle to make “Miral” a film
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 22 March 2011 (more…)

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.

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March 15, 2011 | 2:54 pm Posted by Danielle Berrin

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Farewell, Omar Amiralay

February 6th, 2011 (more…)