B’Tselem-produced documentary “Of Land and Bread” premieres at IDFA
The first full-length documentary film produced by B’Tselem, “Of Land and Bread,” directed by the head of the organization’s video department, Ehab Tarabieh, premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam (IDFA) Sunday Nov. 24, 2019.
The world premiere included additional screenings scheduled later this week as part of the festival.
The film offers an unmediated view of life under Israel’s occupation. It is comprised entirely of documentary footage from B’Tselem’s video archive, and shows Palestinian daily life governed by Israeli state violence.
Of Land and Bread B’Tselem documentary
This violence is carried out by uniformed soldiers and police, but also by Israeli settlers acting under their protection and with the backing of the state. It is a story of a vulnerable life, with no political rights or the right to protest, a life on the receiving end of the project of dispossession of land and resources which is the Israeli occupation, and where one’s only defense is the camera.
In 2007 B’Tselem launched its Camera Project, providing video cameras and training to Palestinian volunteers in the West Bank to document their own lives under the Israeli occupation. Since then, the images taken by its volunteers have become a staple of B’Tselem’s reporting.
The organization now manages an extensive and unique video archive of thousands of hours of carefully cataloged raw material captured by B’Tselem staff and volunteers over the past decade.
Ehab Tarabieh was born in 1982 in Majdal Shams. In 2010, he joined the video department of B’Tselem, and has been the department’s director since 2016. His short narrative film, “The Forgotten,” won the Best Short Film Award at the Doha Tribeca Film Festival in 2012.
In 2014, he co-directed the B’Tselem-produced short documentary “Smile and the World Will Smile Back.”
The film premiered at the 2014 Berlinale Shorts Competition and was screened at many festivals worldwide, including Hot Docs and Clermont-Ferrand. In 2014, it received the Best Short Film Award at the Milano Film Festival and, in 2015, was nominated for Best Short Film at the 28th European Film Awards.
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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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