This text was written by Tue Steen Müller in 2010 after a stay in Ramallah meeting Palestinian filmmakers including those in Gaza, with whom we tutors from Western Europe met to select makers to come to Corfu in Greece to develop their projects further.

Palestine, 4 days, end of March 2010. It’s blue sky but still a bit chilly in Ramallah, where I have been for a couple of days. Lively activity outside in the streets of a nice and calm city, 40.000 are here during night, 80.000 during day. The capital of the Palestinian Authority expresses a friendly atmosphere, and energy – waiting for a Palestinian state to be established. Yellow buses, yellow taxis, building work going on everywhere, white buildings, a hilly city with beautiful viewing spots. A city whose economy is very much depending on investments done by rich Palestinians, who have made their money in the Gulf states and return home one month per year.

I am here with some fellow tutors for a workshop including 10 documentary projects. The intentions behind the initiative are triple: 1) The filmmakers are trained for a pitching of their projects to 12-15 tv editors – that takes place late May. 2) The filmmakers are competing for a participation in the Storydoc documentary programme that has its first session in Corfu, Greece in the beginning of July. 4 of the 10 projects will be picked for that purpose. 3) The filmmakers have their projects discussed and their pitching skills improved – the writing, the verbal and the visual. They are being provided with a huge amount of information and

inspiration, hopefully, by Anne Julienne, Télévision Francaise, Kostas Spiropoulos, Skai television Greece and head of the Storydoc initiative, Jordi Ambros, TV3 Catalunya, Cecilia Lidin, EDN and me.

The learning process goes in both directions. The communication with the Palestinian filmmakers is like one long eye opening process. Their personal stories about not being able to go where they want to go, their isolation, their split-up family relations, the life in a village that is being demolished to give space for one more Israeli settlement, I could go on and on, with words that are not sufficient to describe the constant humiliation of human beings in a occupied territory. There is only one word for this: apartheid.

3 of the projects in the workshop are being dealt with through a video conference system. The Palestinian filmmakers in question are based in Gaza and can not travel to Ramallah. Weird it is to sit and watch them move around, smoke cigarettes, drink tea, small talk and listen to their colleagues discuss and present their proposals in Ramallah in the al qattan centre. It is like a film in itself, an observational documentary, they know that the camera points at them, that we in Ramallah can see them, but they forget, like we forget that they watch us!

It takes a special attitude to live in the occupied territory. Politics is on the agenda every day if you want to move from one place to the other. You have to know if and when the Israeli checkpoints are open, you have to find out whether you are allowed to/can get a permission to go from one place to the other. We asked the local organisers, film director George Khleifi and audiovisual attachée from the French Consulate in Jerusalem, Lucie Meynial, if they thought that we can get the chosen two film project holders from Gaza to Greece, they can only say – it depends on the political situation at that very moment. Planning is not easy!

How do you cope with all that… with a bitter smile, with sarchasm, with melancholy… if you have chosen to stay in Palestine. Our days in Ramallah were full of jokes that referred to the political situation.

The current political situation as it is present in people’s daily life is present in two of the film projects that will be promoted through the Storydoc. Nagham Muhanna , a young energetic woman, is looking for answers to why ”Romance in Gaza” (working title) has gone with the wind. She wants to describe the theme through three generations – from the hypothesis that the daily hard social situation does not leave space for love! Her colleague in Gaza from the media production company Target Group, Mohammed Abu Sido will join the Storydoc with ”Waiting for You” that will try to gather a divided family in a film, as they can not meet in real life: Mohammed is in Gaza, his internet girlfiend is in Ramallah, they can not meet, one of his brothers is in Ramallah as well, and the other in Dubia from where he could go home but does not want to as he is in opposition to the ruling Hamas party. His mother is in Gaza and can not assist to the coming wedding of her daughter, who is also on the West Bank!

Two Ramallah based projects of very different nature will go to the workshop in Vcorfu, Greece. ”Off Frame”, to be directed by Mohanad Yakubi, is the story about the PFU (Palestinian Film Unit) that in the sixties and seventies was not only a strong instrument in the building of a Palestinian identity but according to the filmmaker also aestetically innovative. The filmmaker want to include archive from the revolutionary times, clips from the films, interviews with icons who helped the PLO, like Jean-Luc Godard. A very promising film project. As is the one by Ghada Tirawi, who wants to make ”Palestinian Folk Tales” into an investigation of the Palestinian society. She showed the workshop participants a previous film where she demonstrates a talent for mixing animation and a person telling a story, with real life footage of a methaphoric character.

On the way to Ramallah from the airport in Tel Aviv, during night time, we passed the Kalandia checkpoint about which a very good film, ”Kalandia – a Checkpoint Story” (PHOTO)  has been made (reviewed here, search ”Kalandia”). The taxi driver, a born entertainer, told us that we would go quick through the holy checkpoint in his holy car in the holy land where they have built holy walls to separate the holy people, Arabs and Jews. In this Easter time, can one hope for a holy agreement to re-start holy negociations for peace and a two state agreement?

THE FREEDOM TO SEE

by Emma Davie

It’s a bar in Ramallah called Beit Aneesh. Apparently named after an old lady that lived there. A laid back place with posters from the history of the struggle of the Palestinian people. We had just completed a documentary workshop in Ramallah and Tue (Steen Müller), who has helped so many emerging filmmakers from all over the world, suggested anyone who likes, joins us for a beer or coffee at 8.

Few have come. Most have long, unpredictable journeys through the occupied territories where they will undoubtedly be stopped several times.

Khaled (Jarrar) has turned up though – just arrived from France where his work as a radical conceptual artist has become celebrated. We’re so pleased to see him – a filmmaker of huge promise as well as an artist. Tue has just seen the rough cut of his first film which is about the wall. He shows us a scene with him with a tiny chisel, chipping little bits of the wall off. Tue suggests he end his new film like this. It’s a futile act of defiance, made funny by its impotence. Khaled is also funny and strong in a way that only gentle people can be. I had seen scenes from his film the year before when we were working with him at the Storydoc workshop in Greece. I remember a mother and daughter who could not see each other due to the wall which now carves right through between the West Bank and Jerusalem, splitting up areas. They were forced to slip photos and letters under it to each other. I remember them touching hands through a gap under the wall.

I also remember seeing a boy pushing bread through one of the holes on the wall. What struck me was not the bizarre act itself, but the look on

the boy’s face when caught by the camera’s gaze. Maybe I imagined it, but the look seemed to see himself from outside for a split second, acknowledging the weirdness which had transformed everyone’s life in this country of zones and codes and divisions and passes and discriminations and humiliations – and the wall.

We had seen it earlier that evening. George Khleifi, a local producer and the organiser of Ramallah.doc, had taken us to see how it lacerated the place in two, cutting through roads to Jerusalem which had been the main roads to see relatives, loved ones and to travel to work.

In the dark we deciphered words which had been written across the top by a South African visiting artist.

“We are the children of our histories. Yet we may also choose to be struck by the stories of others. Perhaps this ability is what is called morality. We cannot always act upon what we see but we always have the freedom to see and to be moved”?

Ramallah is a big jail. It is worse than we could have imagined.

George tells us how the wall came up. He explains it is like experiments done on laboratory animals. You get them used to their new captivity gradually. So the wall started with gaps through which people could pass freely. Bit by bit more was erected until the whole thing was up, making the flow of daily life almost impossible. Of course the situation was already bad for any Palestinian in varying degrees. George told us how he was a 5 star occupied person- meaning his family were in Jerusalem in ’48 so he had an Israeli passport and can travel with more freedom and use the main roads to Tel Aviv – most Palestinians are not able to use these roads. What happens if they try? I ask the taxi driver the next day. They get shot at. Most of the people on the workshop were 3 star occupied persons – living in Ramallah or the West Bank. Of course the worst situation is for the Gaza inhabitants- George called them minus two stars.

We saw the check point through which the Palestinians in Ramallah who can travel to Jerusalem for work, have to pass through. It is the only way for them to get their much needed jobs. They have to get there at about 2 or 3 in the morning and queue in order to get through the tiny single metal turnstile in time for work the next day. They repeat this every day with little time for sleep or seeing family.

We used these turnstiles to get to Jerusalem the next day. Maral Quttieneh, a local producer, gives us a tour. Her family were one of the oldest families in Jerusalem she tells us, they used to own 350 houses. All were taken from them in ‘48. She, though, like George is a 5 star occupied person able to travel from Jerusalem. However, when she was away in Paris studying, after a few years she was warned if she didn’t return, her current home would also be taken from her. She shows us home after home where Palestinians lived, grand homes in leafy areas, now belonging to Israelis. She tells us of families who all over again are being evicted from the homes they moved to after being expelled from their original houses. They now have to make way for new Orthodox Israeli immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe.

It’s Spring in Ramallah. In the centre of the town some of the women from the countryside are selling fresh herbs and mint and boys seem to spin some thin bread out of air. George explains how it was once green, how olive trees were here and an orchard there. Now it is a huge concrete building site made bearable by the good humour and generosity of those living there. George’s own family were Greek Orthodox. He shows us the yellow lights of the ever growing settlements on the hilltops around Ramallah. More walls. More divisions and a huge infrastructure of roads and walls and fences and soldiers to support and protect them. I hear of farmers who can’t get near their land to cultivate it any more as these settlements or the roads cut them off. I heard of a man who loved to walk in the hills around Ramallah and was shot dead by soldiers. A father of 3.

The day I head for the airport, the papers report how a group of Jerusalem football fans run amok in a shopping mall climbing all over the chairs and tables, aggressing Palestinian cleaners there and shouting slogans “Death to all Arabs”. No-one was arrested. No police stopped them. I imagine these same cleaners must probably have got up at 3 am to get to work. There is no commentary in the paper.

I start to feel like the boy who has been caught by Khaled’s camera. The transgressive has become so normalized that we are all stunned and don’t respond. Of course what is so shocking in Palestine is not what the Israeli Government does but what the rest of our Governments tacitly endorse. This is the week that America has voted against the UN move even to have an enquiry into the affects of the settlements on the Palestinians.

I tell the taxi driver of Khaled’s art project, to stamp passports with Palestinian stamps and how I wanted to do it last time I saw him but this time on arriving at Tel Aviv airport, was stopped 3 times and questioned so aggressively by Israeli passport officials, that I decided against it. I feel cowardly now and think of the daily hassles my Palestinian friends have. Maral told me how she makes the soldiers who go through all her stuff, put it back exactly as it was. Small triumphs in the face of petty brutality. So what can we do to help you ? I ask the taxi driver. Tell people, he said.

Tel Aviv airport book shop is full of lovely picture books of Israel and the countryside. I feel I am walking through a vast shared hallucination. I think of the filmmakers I have been working with, of their hushed, insistent need to tell, of the yellow lights of the settlements on the tops of the hills- of the hands touching under the wall, of all the stories which we so need to hear.

Emma Davie

The photo refers to Khaled Jarrar’s film “Infiltrators”.