LOVE AMONG BULLETS
West Bank holds first film fest |
Micheal A. Edwards
Friday, July 09, 2004
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The West Bank will host its first international film festival from Thursday next with organisers hoping to encourage Palestinians to make movies about life and love away from the grinding conflict with Israel.
The Ramallah festival opening coincides with the launch of the 21st annual Jerusalem film festival organised by the Israelis. The six-day festival will open with The Motorcycle Diaries directed by Brazilian Walter Salles, and will follow with movies from the West Bank and Gaza, Mexico, Iran, Tunisia, Britain, the United States, Italy, France and Russia. Palestinian films on show are generally political documentaries.
Ramallah, considered the West Bank's commercial and cultural hub, is unique in the way its people have maintained generally normal lives - even flourishing nightspots - despite Israeli army incursions and blockades.
Israeli-Palestinian cultural cooperation stopped in 2000 when a Palestinian uprising began in territories Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.
Israel bans its citizens from entering the West Bank and Gaza, except for Jewish settlements there, and links have been severed between the two peoples on almost all levels.
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