In a collaborative effort between An-Najah National University and Shashat, a Palestinian NGO focusing on woman’s cinema, a film festival was opened in the auditorium of the University for participants interested in culture, cinema, journalism, media and arts. The festival that will last for ten days includes many films from different countries like the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, Iran, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon and Palestine. Some directors of the films are participating in the festival itself. Workshops and presentations as well as debate sessions were organized in order to encourage the interaction between different perspectives and points of views towards each documentary.
The screening of the film festival began with the showing of the documentary “Good Morning Qalqilia” by Director Dima Abu Ghoush. The film shows Qalqilia as a besieged land that was once beautiful however, when the Israelis built the wall, it changed. People lost their land and it was no longer the town people used to know.
The second show was the “Massacre” by the Drector Monika Borgmann from Germany. This documentary is a psycho-political study about the horrifying Sabra and Shatila massacres which occurred in Lebanon in 1982. Thousands of Palestinians were murdered by the Lebanese Christian militia. The director focused not so much on victims but the murderers, which it used to create an illuminating profile of those people to find out how they live with the knowledge of their crimes.
“What is Next” by the director Ghada Terawi, is another documentary that was shown. This film talks about what happened during the invasion of 2002 which was a turning point in the history of Ramallah city. Israeli troops armed with tanks and jetfighters invaded the city, crushing any resistance and killing all aspects of life.
Other documentaries included “25 Kilometres” by the Director Nahed Awwad. This tells a personal journey through military checkpoints and rocky roads beginning in Ramallah, where the film-maker lives and works, aiming to reach her family home in the town of Beit Sahour. Travelling inside the occupied territories shows the audience how Palestinians are forced to avoid checkpoints and how this becomes part of their daily routine for survival. The documentary Naim and Wadee`a by the director Najwa Najjar is a documentary about Yafa before 1948. The documentary explores social life in Yafa through a miniature portrait of a Palestinian couple who lived in the city and the effect of leaving Yafa had on them.
Some other documentaries from Egypt, Canada, Britain and France also were screened. The audience expressed their gratitude for organizing this cultural event in the city of Nablus which has been suffering for five years under an imposed siege by the Israeli state. Shashat organized this festival in three Palestinian cities; Ramallah, Bethlehem and Nablus. Shashat organizes such festivals in order to focus on Woman’s cinema and the social and cultural implications of woman’s representations.