#palace electric

[arkitekcher]

Hopper Street | Ben Daly / Palace Location: Wellington, New Zealand Photography: Sam Hartnett Learn More: HOME Magazine

[fkkd]

Exactly what I needed after this week, Blade Runner 2049 at my absolute faVE cinema.

honestly this movie is probably the best thing to happen to 2017 no lie go watch it

[themovieclubblog]

2014 Palestinian Film Festival – Canberra: Friday, 7 November – Sunday, 9 November!

Cultural Media presents the 2014 Palestinian Film Festival screening at the Palace Electric Cinema from Friday, 7 November to Sunday 9 November!

This year's festival showcasts the very best of Palestinian cinema from around the globe, presenting an exciting opportunity to see and feel the energy, diversity and creativity of Palestine through film.

This year’s program guarantees to surprise and delight as well as inform and challenge.

Visit Palestine in Reel Time and join the growing Australian community discovering and enjoying Palestinian cinema!

For more information and tickets, go to www.palestinianfilmfestival.com.au!

One such challenging film is Mars at Sunrise, which tells the story of a war waged on imagination. The film abstractly portrays the conflict between artists on either side of Israel’s militarized borders, and explores how a powerful creative mind survives, and even thrives, under pressure.

When Azzadeh, a young Jewish American poet, travels to Israel to see the land and people she has only ever heard about through the voices of others she uncovers stories of Israeli soldiers who reflect on the complexity of their military service; Palestinian families who are displaced and wedged between walls; and artists from both cultures who strive to paint a picture of life surrounded by conflict.

While waiting at a checkpoint in Jenin, Azzadeh meets Khaled, a Palestinian painter forced from his home in East Jerusalem. Azzadeh accepts a ride from the handsome stranger, whose life story she soon bears witness to as the two come face to face with Eyal, the young officer who once interrogated Khaled, at the next checkpoint.

Khaled tells Azzadeh the story of his arrest and torture when he refused to collaborate with Israeli Intelligence. Under the duress of solitary confinement, Khaled must use the muscles of his creative imagination to remain free despite the imprisonment of his physical being.

As he struggles, Khaled awakens a wave of jealousy, creativity and chaos in Eyal, himself a frustrated artist. But through this painter’s resistance, courage and spirit, we learn that an artist can never be imprisoned.

Mars at Sunrise is inspired by the life of Palestinian artist Hani Zurob. Hani was born in 1976 in Rafah camp (Gaza). In 1994 he moved to Nablus, where he graduated in 1999 as a B.A. of Fine Arts at the University Al-Najah. He settled then in Ramallah until 2006, where he received a grant that allowed him to reside in Paris at the Cité Internationale des Arts. Hani was unable to return to his homeland. Today he lives in France, creating works that explore state of exile, waiting, movement and displacement - his work presents Palestine through a personal perspective and conceptual context that transcends borders and geography - concepts that remain close to the Painter's heart.

Hani was listed by The Huffington Post as one of ten ‘international artists to watch’ in 2013.

Mars at Sunrise is NYU Tisch graduate and founder of Eyes Infinite Films, director Jessica Habie’s first Feature Film. Jessica's documentary works “Beyond Blue and Gray” and “Art and Apathy” received awards at several film festivals including Tribeca Film Festival, The Cannes Short Film Corner, and the Berlinale Talent Campus.

In 2003, Jessica released “Another World is Happening and The Art of Love and Struggle”. The 2008 Tribeca Film Festival awarded Jessica with the Best Documentary Short award for “Mandatory Service”, which shows “the perspective of war and conflict from the participants themselves.”

With Jessica's documentary projects “Art and Apathy” and “Beyond Blue and Gray”, produced with her creative partner Nirah Shirazipour, Eyes Infinite Films was awarded prizes at the Cannes Short Film Corner, the Berlinale Talent Campus, and the Moondance Film Festival. The films screened at several films festivals, universities, and community centers around the world helping to shine light on a few of the many untold narratives from the Israeli Palestinian Conflict.

In 2009 Jessica began writing her first narrative film,Mars at Sunrise, which was produced in Nazareth in 2011. The film stars golden globe winning actor Ali Suliman and introduces Guy El Hanan. The film also features original poetry by Haale Gafori and a soundtrack in six languages (English, Hebrew, Russian, Yiddish, Farsi and Arabic) produced by Tamir Muskat of the Balkan Beat Box, and featuring original music by Itamar Ziegler and

Mohsen Subhi.

The film is set for limited theatrical and wide digital distribution in February of 2014. Proceeds for the film will go to the newly created Fajr Falestine Film Fund and will support the production of experimental and otherwise genre defiant works of cinema from the Palestinian Diaspora.

Director Jessica Habie has released the below statement in regard to Mars at Sunrise:

“ Mars at Sunriseis a film that was inspired by the life of Hani Zurob.

I met Hani years ago while making my film Meet Me Out of the Siege. He spoke to me about the torture he endured. He described the perverse relationship between himself and his jailor. Hani’s interrogator asked him to collaborate with Israeli Intelligence and disclose which artists in Ramallah had connections to the various “terrorist” organizations. The officer asked Hani to sketch his portrait, and when Hani refused to sign the sketch, his hands all the time bound with plastic handcuffs, the officer broke the hand he believed was the artist’s drawing hand. I began to ask myself what interest did this military man have in a painter? I became very curious about the inner world of these two men. Could it be that within the interrogator lay a deep creativity akin that within Hani?

When the screenplay was finally finished I sent Hani the text. We shared great trust, affection and friendship between us. I told him I would not make a film that was harmful to Palestine in anyway. I promised I would not simplify his story and juxtapose it unfairly against the pain of his jailor, or make another problematic stereotypical film about the occupation. But these are just words. When he read the script, he saw that the interrogator in my film was an artist like himself, and he felt this pushed the limit too far. Could I dare to imagine that the man who tortured him was an artist? We had planned to use his paintings in the film as the body of work for the character of Khaled. He said we could not use them.

Eventually I accepted the reality that I might never please my friend. I understood that it would be nearly impossible to make a film about a torture victim’s experience that the victim would not feel deceived by. The film became a rich tapestry of hundreds of people’s testimonies, filtered through the witness of my imagination.

Mars at Sunrise developed a truly universal language, even as many of the scenes remained written word for word from Hani’s original testimony.

I recently traveled to Paris to visit Hani. I prepared myself for what could be one of the hardest days of my life. I told myself, when he says “I never want to see this film again” or “you have betrayed me” I would have to be strong and understand it’s bigger than him or me now. There are great truths in this film and I know it’s a powerful work made by many talented, dedicated people. But I was scared.

We were alone when we watched the film. His eight-month pregnant wife was stuck in Jerusalem, fighting the bureaucracy of the occupation. She was unable to leave the country without losing her Jerusalem ID and the right to live in the home where she was born, because she had been living in Paris for the last years.

Nevertheless, she needed to leave immediately to deliver the child on French soil so her otherwise stateless Gazan child could have a chance at a French passport. Hani was deep in the thick net of the occupation, although we sat in a small painting studio in Paris.

I trembled with nerves, drinking the tiny cup of strong Arabic coffee in front of me. As the credit sequence appeared on the screen I knew he would soon turn and look me in the eyes. I held my breath until he said “Mabrouk” and a smile spread wide across his face. A soft smile, a reflective smile. A genuine smile full of stirred up memories. Congratulations he said again, and I released tension in my body that I had been holding for five years.

Hani said that it was difficult that in many ways Khaled and Eyal’s stories parallel, but ultimately he felt the work was strong, sophisticated and intelligent. From his point of view, Khaled's character is the one that allows Eyal to look into the mirror and see for himself who he has become. In that moment I felt deep gratitude to all who have trusted me with their stories, and a great hope that we will transcend the many walls we have built between us on Earth, one story at a time.

THE EVOLUTION OF MARS AT SUNRISE

After making my documentaries Art and Apathy and Beyond Blue and Gray I was left feeling my work in the region was not complete. I was especially interested in the testimony of a Palestinian man named Wajee Tameise. He shared with me a story in which he found himself waiting at an Israeli checkpoint for a young solider to wake up. This solider had fallen asleep on duty. His slumber blocked the path of mothers, grandmothers, children, businessmen and students alike. When the soldier suddenly awoke he motioned with his foot to open the checkpoint.

This image, with its problematic poetry, illuminates the day to day relations between Israelis and Palestinians, and shows how un-natural and even perverted “non-violent” interactions between the two groups have become. I wanted to expose the beautifully tragic humanity expressed in this simple, yet cruel image of a sleeping solider. I did not feel the documentary medium offered me the language I needed to turn these impressions into something meaningful and innovative. I needed a more subtle language.

I knew that if I set out to make a film that explained my thoughts in a linear, literal way my film, like many attempted in the region, would drown in a world of clichés and righteous indignation. I put together an hour of documentary material that I thought was provocative and assembled a group of musicians, asking them to respond creatively to the documentary. This resulted in a powerful collaboration with world-renowned producer Tamir Muskat of the Balkan Beat Box. Together we built a recording studio in the desert near Gaza and invited musicians from Tel Aviv, Ramallah and Iran (via Sweden) to create a soundtrack in English, Farsi, Hebrew, Yiddish and Russian. From the original music, I wrote the narrative of Mars at Sunrise. The relationship between the two main characters, Eyal and Khaled, was born from the guitar and loud performances of Mohsen Subhi (Ramallah) and Itamar Zeigler (Tel Aviv).”

Mars at Sunrise is screening as part of the 2014 Palestinian Film Festival at Palace Electric Cinema, 4pm Saturday, 8 November, 2014.

http://youtu.be/YDB5XbAwbF8

http://youtu.be/YDB5XbAwbF8

[canberracan]

Dear Canberra, Even the cinemas are fancy. Sincerely yours, etc.