October 19–28, 2018
Beginning with
opening night’s Reports
on Sarah and Saleem (dir. Muayad Alayan), which includes an after party with
filmgoers, directors, organizers, music, and dancing, this year’s Boston Palestine
Film Festival offers an amazing range of award-winning films on the pressing
subject of human rights. For the full program visit bostonpalestinefilmfest.org.
The overriding
message that comes through the documentaries, shorts, and features in this
year’s Palestine Film Festival is the power of “nationality.” The films delve
into the psychology of nationhood and the nearly insurmountable plight of
displaced people who essentially don’t “exist” if they aren’t citizens of an
extant nation. Many live for generations in refugee camps devoid of average
employment opportunities and basic social services.
Another
nugget in this program is the film art of the shorts in particular. It’s mind-boggling
to experience a complete statement, a perfect story, in five to twenty-five
minutes through a visual medium. The shorts don’t rely on dialogue but on
interior emotions conveyed by the protagonists’ faces, enhanced by the creative
film techniques and sound.
The
“Shorts II” series screens October 28 and focuses on the immigrant experience.
Again, it’s the emotions of the central characters in these six films that tell
a gripping, usually unfathomable story for American audiences, or those who
aren’t recent immigrants themselves. In only 14 tension-filled minutes, we
absorb the young woman Salam (Hana
Chamoun), a Syrian immigrant in New York, earning a living as a Lyft driver.
With only a few lines of dialogue, we understand that she lives with her
brother Rashad’s family but her fiancé Musel is stuck in Syria and is now in
the hospital with serious head wounds as a result of the war. Much of the movie
involves a Lyft ride with Salam’s opposite: a young, blond American woman named Audrey who has little worry
about money but serious problems in her relationship. During the course of the
women’s entire night’s drive—Upstate and back—they bond, but only as sympathetic
women, for their deeper feelings are “too complicated,” they say, to share. They
mean “too painful” for words. Audrey returns to her dreary love life while
Salam overflows with joy when she receives a call from Musel—alive! We
understand like never before the value of a human life. (Actress Hana Chamoun attends
the MFA screening of Salam on October
28.)
All
of the festival’s shorts drive home the meaning of families and of missing or
losing a loved one. In Rupture (dir.
Yassmina Karajah), we spend a few hours (18-minutes film time) with teenage
siblings, Salim and Leila, newly arrived Syrians to a peaceful, middle-class Vancouver
suburb. Wearing a headset, Salim listens to an English pronunciation lesson. In
another room, his younger sister’s headset plays music, their faces showing
their different personalities: he’s ultra-serious and she’s lively. Salim
overhears his mother on the phone in the kitchen. She’s hysterical over the
news that her eldest child Hany has been shot and is in the hospital: “We
should never have left him there! He’s my son! Send us a photo of him! I want
my boy!” The trauma rocks through the house, through Salim’s stunned face, and
through us, the audience.
The
rest of the day goes on with Salim in a distracted state that tells all when he
looks at Hany’s photo on his phone. What is it like to get the news that your
older brother has been shot because of a senseless war and may be dying too far
away to reach, to see, to hold the hand of? Or your son? Salim and Leila’s
faces show us what it’s like. We don’t need, and don’t receive, much
dialogue—it’s not necessary. Watching these children, we experience how the
most painful emotions are always wordless. The only consolation, which barely touches
the grief, is the physical and psychological presence of another family member,
in this case brother and sister.
Catherine
Prowse and Hannah Quinn’s Laymun
tells an entire world in five animated minutes. Colors in this war-torn village
are muted, life sucked out of them. Surviving townsfolk huddle together while a
soundtrack drops bombs. A woman delivers the only living green thing to a
neighbor’s doorstep—a lemon tree seedling. It feels as if the home has just experienced
a death and the plant pays community respect. Lemon trees also symbolize
healing: the cleansing and restoring of the mind, body, and spirit.
With
a shift to guitar music we are in the woman’s greenhouse where she cultivates lots
of lemon seedlings as if to propagate life and goodness to serve as a
counterforce to the violence and destruction. She looks at a picture of herself
with a man, presumably lost to her in the war. A bomb shatters the greenhouse.
The next day, the villagers are on a bus being evacuated. The woman takes a last
surviving lemon from her bag and gives it to a young girl. It glows like the
girl’s smile and symbolizes hope for the girl’s future. In a mostly brown
movie, the bright yellow lemon is a seedling for the life that inhumanity has
nearly obliterated.
These
are just a few of the visually and intellectually outstanding short films
screening at the festival. The longer documentary Soufra (dir. Thomas Morgan) is a triumphal story about enterprising
women in Beirut’s Bourj el-Barjneh refugee camp. Johny Karam’s photography of fresh
food preparation, laughing cooks’ faces, and abundant, sizzling and succulent Middle
Eastern cuisine brings color, vivacity, and the good things in life to a movie
about families devoid of hope for viable employment and a future for their kids.
Palestinian
Mariam Shaar was born in the camp, which began in 1948. Her childhood dreams for
a good education and fulfilling career ended when she had to drop out of school
to support the family. In the film, she wants to do something about the camp’s dire
situation. She tells us that in Lebanon, doors to refugees have always remained
open, but once settled in a camp, there’s almost no chance of upward mobility. Laws
prevent renting housing outside the camp, and generally those without a
“nationality,” such as Palestinians, face employment and social restrictions. Their
situation feels synonymous with nonexistence.
Mariam
starts Soufra, a high-quality catering business run by women that ultimately
succeeds outside the camp’s boundaries, promising hope for some families for
the future, and also setting a precedent for more entrepreneurial initiatives
that contribute to Lebanon’s economy and ethnic integration. The legal road to
Mariam’s goal is arduous, and the film travels with each of her steps to
achievement—registering a business, getting licenses and work permits, and buying
a food truck. Throughout the movie, Alexander Seaver’s music is light, gentle,
and hopeful, and embodies the unwavering strength of the working women. Over
the months, the project offers them more than financial stability; it changes
their lives and how they feel about themselves: “You realize your worth,” one
of the cooks says. “What we’re doing benefits ourselves, not just our families.
We learn something new every day. We get out, meet people, see different places.
Women can do anything, especially in these times.” The women’s men are glad for
the help that contributes to a better home life. “And she’s happy, she likes
her crew,” one husband says. The women come from different
backgrounds—Palestinian, Syrian, Lebanese—and learn about each other’s food,
traditions, and personal lives. It’s a warm and supportive “women-for-women”
enclave. One cook informs us: “I tell my daughters not to rely on anyone.”
 |
| Soufra means a big fancy table with a variety of delicious foods. |
Mariam
concludes the film with her persevering and positive energy: “We hope for a
better life in the future. I hope refugees stop being associated with security
threats. Terrorism has no nationality. There is the good and the bad
everywhere. I hope that the children, who are the pillars of the future, live a
healthy life, to be beneficial to others.”
May
Mariam’s initiative and success speak to the whole world.
