The life and works of Palestinian filmmaker Michel Khleifi will be celebrated in London at the Shabbak Festival featuring his films and the films of others. Khleifi produced the West Bank’s first documentary film in 1980 “Fertile Memory”
Michel KhleifiFor many years, Michel Khleifi was the ultimate voice of Palestinian cinema. Emerging from the ashes of PLO resistance cinema, the Nazareth-born, Brussels-educated and based filmmaker was the leader of the so-called ‘new Palestinian cinema’ of the ’80s ─ a movement that ventured to break the dominant stereotypical representation of Palestinians and create a new space that links Palestine’s destroyed past with its austere present and uncertain future.
Always deemed controversial by Arab commentators and foreign critics alike, Khleifi’s films were the first to capture Palestine’s true soul, the first to depart from the jingoistic works of previous generations to present rich portraits of a complex reality; of an atypical land and its atypical inhabitants.
In nine films that range between documentary and fiction narratives, Khleifi has developed a recognisable set of symbols, themes, characters and aesthetics that have become a key part of Palestine’s collective memory.
He made history in 1980 with the documentary “Fertile Memory,” the first feature produced in the West Bank; yet it wasn’t until 1987’s “Wedding in Galilee” that Khleifi became an artist of international renown.
Winning the FIPRESCI prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1987 and the Golden Seashell award at the San Sebastian Film Festival the same year, “Wedding” ─ a chronicle of wedding in small Palestinian village disrupted by the attendance of intrusive Israeli guests ─ was the film that put Palestinian cinema on the world film map.
To celebrate his 65th birthday, the London-based Shubbak Festival of contemporary Arab Culture is celebrating Khleifi’s career in its current edition by having him curate this year’s film programme. The line-up is comprised of a selection of his own films along with a number of European and Arab titles that address some of the themes and concerns of his own work.
Arab and European films presented in the programme include Maroun Bagdadi’s gritty Lebanese Civil War drama, “Out of Life” (1991); Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s classic cross-culture love story, “Ali: Fear Eats the Soul” (1974); and Kamal Aljafari’s Palestinian experimental documentary of displacement and agonising stillness, “Port of Memory” (2010).
Ray Hanania is an award winning political and humor columnist who analyzes American and Middle East politics, and life in general. He is an author of several books.
Hanania covered Chicago Politics and Chicago City Hall from 1976 through 1992 at the Daily Southtown and the Chicago Sun-Times. He began writing in 1975 publishing The Middle Eastern Voice newspaper in Chicago (1975-1977). He later published “The National Arab American Times” newspaper (2004-2007).
Hanania writes weekly columns on Middle East and American Arab issues as Special US Correspondent for the Arab News ArabNews.com, at TheArabDailyNews.com, and at SuburbanChicagoland.com. He has published weekly columns in the Jerusalem Post newspaper, YNetNews.com, Newsday, the Orlando Sentinel, Houston Chronical, and Arlington Heights Daily Herald.
Hanania is the recipient of four (4) Chicago Headline Club “Peter Lisagor Awards” for Column writing. In November 2006, he was named “Best Ethnic American Columnist” by the New American Media. In 2009, Hanania received the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Award for Writing from the Society of Professional Journalists. He is the recipient of the MT Mehdi Courage in Journalism Award. He was honored for his writing skills with two (2) Chicago Stick-o-Type awards from the Chicago Newspaper Guild. In 1990, Hanania was nominated by the Chicago Sun-Times editors for a Pulitzer Prize for his four-part series on the Palestinian Intifada.
His writings have also been honored by two national Awards from ADC for his writing, and from the National Arab American Journalists Association.
Hanania is the US Special Correspondent for the Arab News Newspaper, covering Middle East and Arab American issues. He writes for the Southwest News newspaper group writing on mainstream American issues.
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