Date and Time: Thursday February 1st at 7:30PM EST
Address : Anthology Film Archives, 32 2nd Ave, New York, NY 10003
Get Tickets Here
Charged with the conviction that it’s vitally important to present films that shed light on the Palestinian experience, that humanize Palestinian civilians, and that explore the historical context for the current war, we will be presenting screenings over the coming months of films that showcase Palestinian voices. With these screenings, we aim to push back against the stifling of both Palestinian voices and voices of protest.
Program:
A World Not Ours, Mahdi Fleifel, 2012, 93 min.
In Arabic with English subtitles
Before his family settled in Denmark, filmmaker Mahdi Fleifel grew up in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain el-Helweh, in Lebanon. Hastily built in 1948 and, at the time of filming, housing 70,000 refugees in one square kilometer, Ain el-Helweh is an unlikely source of nostalgia and yearning, but for Fleifel it represents the closest thing to a home, a precious concept given his family’s history and eventual settlement in Europe. Through the years Fleifel returned regularly to visit friends and family, always with camera in tow, and in A WORLD NOT OURS he shapes his extensive video diaries into an affectionate, witty, yet ultimately shattering portrait of this community. Gradually focusing on the experiences of Fleifel’s friend Abu Eyad, whose natural intelligence makes him an especially articulate and sensitive witness to the tragically circumscribed lives of Ain el-Helweh’s residents, A WORLD NOT OURS conveys the Palestinian experience with an insight that very few films have equaled.
Xenos, Mahdi Fleifel, 2014, 13 min.
In Arabic with English subtitles.
“On a modern odyssey Palestinians are stranded in Athens. Their wandering has led them from a refugee camp in Lebanon, through Syria and Turkey to the Greece of the Euro crisis – a haven that turns out not to be substantially calmer than the sea.” –VIDEONALE
20 Handshakes 4 Peace, Mahdi Fleifel, 2014, 5 min
“September 13, 1993: Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, and Bill Clinton’s handshake on the lawn of the White House after signing the Oslo Accords. A historic moment, repeated 20 times. Tainted by countless shattered hopes and with a voice-over by intellectual Edward Said, expressing his outrage at the agreement.” –ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Total running time: ca. 115 min
