Palestinian Independent Film Festival 2024
https://www.neme.org/projects/hosted/piff2024
The 1st edition of the Palestinian Film Festival – Limassol, is an Independent non-commercial cultural initiative, that will showcase a curated selection of award-winning short films, features, and documentaries primarily created by Palestinian film-makers. Through this event, it is aspired to shed light on the Palestinian realities in Gaza, the West Bank, and the occupied territories of 1948, while also celebrating the rich history and culture of Palestine.
The festival will be hosted by the NeMe Arts Centre, Synergeio Theatre, Tapper Bar (Tapper film club), and Sto Dromo.
The following films will be screened at the NeMe Arts Centre:
Friday, 16 February 2024 at 8pm
Jenin, Jenin, 2002. Dir. Mohammad Bakri
Initially banned by the Israeli Film Board and still a source of controversy, Bakri’s documentary bears witness to the aftermath of the April 2002 Israeli re-conquest and partial demolition of the Jenin refugee camp. The documentary hears survivors presenting their own testimony and presents an often harrowing portrayal of a Palestinian community responding to trauma.
Winner – Carthage International Film Festival – Best Film, 2002.
In 2021 an Israeli court ruled that screening or distributing Mohammed Bakri’s controversial documentary “Jenin, Jenin” should be banned and that all copies of it should be seized.
Lod District Court Judge Halit Silash also ruled that actor and director Bakri must pay 175,000 shekels ($55,000) to a reservist who appears in the film as a participant in the battle in the Jenin refugee camp in 2002. The film suggests Israeli soldiers committed war crimes in Jenin during “Operation Defensive Shield.”
Mohammad Bakri (b. 1953 in the village of Bi’ina in northern Israel.), is a Palestinian actor and film director. He is a graduate from Tel Aviv University. He began his professional acting career in with Habima Theatre in Tel Aviv, Haifa theater, and al-Kasaba theater in Ramallah. His one-man plays include The Pessoptimist, 1986; The Anchor, 1991; Season of Migration to the North, 1993; and Abu Marmar, 1999, were he performed in Hebrew and Arabic.
After a few years of acting in Palestinian and Israeli films, Bakri began to act in international films in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Canada. Bakri also directed two documentary films including the controversial Jenin, Jenin.
Three nights in Haifa, 2023. Dir. Hadil Alramly
On the outskirts of the city of Beirut, a young Palestinian man, Raed Abu Ajaj, aged 19, lives alone in his run down house in the Burj al-Barajneh refugee camp.
Although his family succeeded in claiming asylum in Germany and thus able to build a better life, Raed was prevented from applying to join them once he reached the age of eighteen. Amongst the daily routine of his work as a trainee nurse and his difficult living conditions in the camp, Raed receives some terrible news. This revelation leaves him in a state of shock and confusion between the hope of a renunciation with his family or from being prevented from saying his final farewell.
Hadil Alramli is a Palestinian producer, journalist, film-maker and art social science researcher. She has more than fifteen years of rich experience working as a photojournalist, trainer and art director with various institutions in the Middle East and Europe. She holds a MSc in Cinema from the Luca School of Arts in Belgium and a BA in Media and Communication from the Islamic University of Gaza. Hadil has received an array of international recognition and national prizes, most recently the Arts in Society Award in Belgium in 2021.
Vibrations from Gaza, 2023. Dir. Rehab Nazal
Vibrations from Gaza offers a glimpse into the experiences of deaf children in the colonised and confined coastal territory of Gaza, Palestine. Born and raised under siege and frequent onslaughts these children, including Amani, Musa, Israa, and others, provide vivid accounts of their encounter of bombardment and the constant presence of drones in their sky. The children describe their perceptions of missiles strikes through sensing vibrations in the air, trembling of the ground, and the resonance of collapsing buildings. The film also questions whether the deafness of these children is a natural or a consequence of Israel’s use of sonic weaponry, such as sonic booms.
With support from the Ontario Arts Council, the director embarked on a journey to Gaza Strip via Egypt, circumventing the restrictions placed by the Israeli occupation regime which prohibits access to Gaza from the West Bank, without individual permits-rarely issued. While in Gaza, she worked with children in an art therapy program following 2021 attack. She was deeply touched by the conditions and experiences of deaf children at the Atfaluna Society for Deaf Children and began questioning the deafness of the world towards the conditions of 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza.
This film gives Palestinian deaf children in the besieged Gaza a voice to articulate and share their experiences, shedding light on the horrific conditions they are enduring since 2007.
Rehab Nazzal is a Palestinian-born multidisciplinary artist and educator based in Montreal, Canada and Bethlehem, Palestine. Her work deals with the effects of settler colonial violence on peoples, on land, and on other non-human life in colonised territories. Nazzal’s photography, video, sound and installation have been exhibited and screened in Palestine, across Canada and internationally. She is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at Concordia University in Montreal and a professor at Dar Al-Kalima University in Bethlehem, Palestine. Nazzal has created multiple short films, blurring the boundaries between documentary and video art, including Dima, A Night at Home, Canada Park, Bodies in Motion, Mourning, and Bil’in.
Saturday, 17 February 2024 at 8pm
Forages, 2022. Dir. Manna Jumana
Foragers depicts the dramas around the practice of foraging for wild edible plants in Palestine/Israel with wry humour and a meditative pace. Shot in the Golan Heights, the Galilee and Jerusalem, it moves between fiction, documentary and archival footage to portray the impact of Israeli nature protection laws on these customs. The restrictions prohibit the collection of the artichoke-like ’akkoub and za’atar (thyme), and have resulted in fines and trials for hundreds caught collecting these native plants. For Palestinians, these laws constitute an ecological veil for legislation that further alienates them from their land while Israeli state representatives insist on their scientific expertise and duty to protect. Following the plants from the wild to the kitchen, from the chases between the foragers and the nature patrol, to courtroom defences, Foragers captures the inherited love, joy and knowledge in these traditions alongside their resilience to the prohibitive law. By reframing the terms and constraints of preservation, the film raises questions around the politics of extinction, namely who determines what is made extinct and what gets to live on.
Jumana Manna is a visual artist and film-maker. Her work explores how power is articulated, focusing on the body, land and materiality in relation to colonial inheritances and histories of place. Through sculpture, film-making, and occasional writing, Manna deals with the paradoxes of preservation practices, particularly within the fields of archaeology, agriculture and law. Her practice considers the tension between the modernist traditions of categorisation and conservation and the unruly potential of ruination as an integral part of life and its regeneration. Jumana was raised in Jerusalem and lives in Berlin.
Discussion with Klitos Papastylianou.
The screening will be followed by a discussion with Klitos Papastylianou, Environmental social scientist and activist. Facilitated by Melanie Steliou.
Elsewhere
As the festival is hosted in four venues, here are the films that will screen elsewhere:
Thursday 15 February 2024. Venue: Synergeio Theatre
Gaza Mon Amour, 2020. Dir. Arab and Tarzan Nasser.
Sunday 18 February 2024. Venue: Sto Dromo Bar
Today They Took My Son, 2014. Dir. Farah Nabulsi
Bukjeh El Lemon, 2022. Dir. Mays Shkerat
Nation Estate, 2012. Dir. Larissa Sansour
Lovesick In The West Bank, 2021. Dir. Said Zagha
Live DJ Event with Stelios Keryniotis featuring Palestinian music.
Monday 19 February 2024. Venue: Synergeio Theatre
The Wanted 18, 2014. Dir Amer Shomali & Paul Cowan
Discussion with Dr. Charalambos Charalambous
Tuesday 20 February 2024. Venue: Tapper Bar
The Present, 2020. Dir. Farah Nabulsi
120 KM, 2021. Dir. Waseem Khair
Wednesday 21 February 2024. Venue: Tapper Bar
Solomon’s Stone, 2015. Dir. Ramzi Al Maqdisi
Hamza-Chasing the Ghost Chasing Me, 2022. Dir. Ward Kayyal
Thursday 22 February 2024. Venue: Synergeio Theatre
200 Meters, 2020. Dir. Ameen Nayfeh
Credits
Programme curator – Jafra Abu Zoulouf
Festival directors – Jafra Abu Zoulouf, Adonis Florides
Organisers – Jafra Abu Zoulouf, Adonis Florides, Yiannis Ioannou
Photography: Pavlos Vrionides
