Movies - AP
Palestinians, Israelis Hold Film Festivals
Date: Sun, Jul 18, 2004
By MATTI HUUHTANEN, Associated Press Writer
RAMALLAH, West Bank - Palestinians and Israelis held simultaneous film festivals this week in Ramallah and Jerusalem — neighboring cities separated by a contentious barrier and nearly four years of fighting.
Liana Saleh, a 17-year-old Palestinian showing her first film, says she is tired of the regional conflict and the negative images being projected about Palestinians.
"We aren't just recipients of foreign aid or victims in a struggle," she said before the screening of "A Boy and a Color Box." "Children here have dreams and hopes, like anywhere else."
Some 500 cinema buffs at the West Bank's first international film festival gave a standing ovation to the movie about young Palestinians who struggle to overcome hardship to make dreams come true.
Eighty movies, including 50 by foreign directors, were screened at the weeklong Ramallah International Film Festival.
The event coincided with the 21st Jerusalem Film Festival, some 10 miles south of Ramallah.
The 10-day Jerusalem festival, which ended Saturday, featured 200 films from 50 countries, was opened by Sarajevo-born director Emir Kusturica, who presented "Life is a Miracle," a wry look at the 1992-1995 Bosnian civil war.
Organizers of the two festivals emphasized they weren't trying to upstage each other.
Israeli-Palestinian cultural cooperation, which flourished in the late 1990s after an interim peace agreement, has collapsed since the resurgence of conflict in September 2000.
The Ramallah festival was postponed by a month because of a delay in the construction of its main venue, the three-story, gleaming cultural center that was inaugurated in early July.
"No way are we trying to compete with the Jerusalem festival. On the contrary, I think it's wonderful that we can both be showing movies at the same time," festival director Adam Zuabi told The Associated Press.
More than 7,000 tickets were sold at the Ramallah festival that ended Wednesday. Mobile cinemas were set up in villages around Ramallah, which has only one movie house.
Several visitors, including Humbert Balsan, chairman of the European Film Academy, attended both festivals. The Frenchman said he would like to see the two sides getting together.
"We hope this is an opening, so that these borders disappear thanks to cinema," Balsan said.
In Jerusalem, movies were shown at eight locations, including outdoor night screenings at a city amphitheater. More than 65,000 tickets were sold and almost all the shows were sold out.
The Jerusalem festival was born after movie aficionados, Lia van Leer and her late husband, Wim, founded film clubs in Israel in the 1950s. They toured major festivals in France, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Canada and the United States, before launching the Jerusalem festival in 1983.
"Jerusalem is a melancholy city, a difficult city. This festival brings a ray of light and hope," said van Leer, a prominent Israeli cultural figure.
About one-fourth of this year's $1.2 million budget came from the Israeli government and the city, with the remainder covered by private sponsors and ticket sales.
The Ramallah festival ran on a shoestring of "a few thousand dollars," mostly provided by foreign governments and cultural organizations, said Zuabi, a Palestinian who works in Rome as an assistant to renowned Italian director, Ettore Scola.
The only movie that had been slated for both festivals, "Thirst," an Israeli film in Arabic, was not shown at Ramallah because Palestinian director Tawfik Abu Wael protested that organizers had failed to provide wide-screen projection.
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