culture

Palestinian artists launch art festival to protest Israel’s barrier

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By REUTERS
WEST BANK

Sunday, 04 November 2012

Palestinian artists showcased their art work at West Bank’s Qalandia International Festival on Thursday framed as part of a creative reaction to the Israeli barrier that separates Palestinian villages from each other.

Israel has said the barrier, a mix of electronic fences and walls that encroaches on West Bank territory, is meant to keep suicide bombers out of its cities.

Palestinians call the barrier — whose course encompasses Israeli settlements in the West Bank — a disguised move to annex or fragment territory Palestinians seek for a viable state.

The International court of Justice declared the planned 600-km (370-mile) barrier, more than half of which is completed, illegal but Israel has ignored the non-binding ruling.

Qalandia International Festival Art Director, Jack Persekian, said it was an important way for Palestinians to channel their emotional reactions to the barrier.

“The wall and the road that was constructed recently connect the Israeli settlements together and separate the Palestinian villages from each other. The reaction to this separation was a cultural festival. It is an important and a good reaction — it shows a positive, artistic and cultural spirit in a painful situation that should be stopped,” he said.

The festival, which showcases Palestinian contemporary art projects, performances, films, and other cultural activities, kicked off on Thursday at Qalandia village northern of Jerusalem and ends on November 15.

According to the festival’s organizers, over 50 local and International artists came together for the launch of Qalandia International, ‘a milestone contemporary art event’.

Palestinian artist Khaled Jarar screened his 2 minutes film at the festival. His film, too, addresses barrier issues and Palestinians’ reactions to it.

“I went to the wall and I cut out some pieces of it. I smashed them then I mixed them with cement and water and I made a ball which children play with. My message is that the wall is an ugly thing, so we should seek out ways in which to use it and the occupation for our benefit,” he told Reuters television.

The festival was organized by seven Palestinian institutions- Riwaq, Al Ma’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art, A. M. Qattan Foundation, Palestinian Art Court – Al Hoash, International Art Academy – Palestine, Sakakini Cultural Centre and the House of Culture Arts – Nazareth.

Palestinian band ‘Dar Qandeel’ performed traditional and modern music at the festival’s opening ceremony and people from various Palestinian villages and cities as well as Internationals came to attend.

Yara Bayoumi, a visitor at the festival, said the cooperation involved in hosting such a festival was wonderful.

“The festival is very nice. It is the first of its kind in Palestine. It is the first time seven organizations have worked together to organize such a festival. I hope it will have a good effect, and put Palestine in the world’s contemporary art,” she said.
The festival is expected to tour Jerusalem and other West Bank cities.

This article appeared in http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/11/04/247588.html

SoA Women take Shakespeare project to Palestine

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By Zoë Miller

Columbia Daily Spectator

Published October 1, 2012

The Manhattan Shakespeare Project’s current venture is centered on the creation of original theatrical pieces that will incorporate Shakespeare’s sonnets and Palestinian youth songs.

For the all-female Shakespeare company Manhattan Shakespeare Project, all the world really is a stage­ for cross-cultural communication.  MSP’s newest project, “Shakespeare For A New World: The Palestinian Voice,” is centered on the creation of original theatrical pieces that will incorporate Shakespeare’s sonnets and Palestinian youth songs. Teaching artists Sarah Eismann, SoA ’12, and Jensen Olaya, SoA ’12, will travel to Palestine in late November, accompanied by documentary film director Lena Rudnick, SoA directing candidate, to work with students at the Drama Academy Ramallah and the Jenin refugee camp’s Freedom Theatre.

Eismann said that although “Shakespeare For A New World” and MSP are not political entities, projects “have the potential for having political undertones” by nature of the fact that MSP is an all-female company traveling to a region often associated with more rigid patriarchy. But the purpose of “Shakespeare For A New World,” above all else, is for Eismann and Olaya to work with the students at the Drama Academy Ramallah to create theater and art. Due to their geographical location, the Palestinian theater students are extremely isolated. The project will “help get their voice outside of the borders of Palestine,” Eismann said.

The concept of “Shakespeare For A New World” emerged after Eismann performed in an international production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” that took place in 2011 at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Germany. The “Midsummer” cast was comprised of acting students from Folkwang, in addition to students from Columbia, the Drama Academy Ramallah, the Shanghai Theatre Academy, and the Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu. Eismann said that she was inspired by the beauty of “a Palestinian Helena working with a Romanian Demetrius.” Shakespeare’s words, she realized, could effectively cut across cultural and linguistic barriers. “We found our common world. We found our common language,” she said.

The Folkwang production, Eismann said, led to an epiphany. “If only the world could work this way, we would have no problems,” she said. “It wouldn’t be me against you—it would be what was on that stage.”

Eismann was thrilled when the Drama Academy Ramallah’s director invited her to teach the “Shakespeare For A New World” workshops and make this vision of “a completely united, holistic, humanistic world” more of a reality—at least in theater.

As time went on, the project gained momentum and “exploded into this very idealistic, very grandiose plan.” The intense, six-hours-a-day workshops will include not only actors from the Academy but also teenagers at the Jenin refugee camp, which is one of the oldest, most devastated refugee camps in Palestine. With the help of a team including Rudnick, these workshops and the performances that result from them will be filmed.

In the next five years, Eismann hopes to take the methodology that the MSP team learns from the Ramallah and Jenin workshops and bring it to high school students in New York.

The end goal, she said, is to get diverse communities across the globe to learn about each other, “to use Shakespeare to talk, to create theater, to create peace.”

arts@columbiaspectator.com

This article appeared in Colubmia Spectator

 

 

 

 

A Message from Young Palestinians in Gaza to the World!

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Singing Palestine: Rim Banna

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Al Jazeera

Rim Banna has given melodic interpretations to the suffering of Palestinians and their defiant hopes and aspirations.

Between October 3 and 7, I was part of a wide-ranging celebration of Palestinian arts and culture in Milano, Italy.

The Philastiniat festival of Palestinian film, literature, theatre, folklore, music, dance and poetry opened in various locations in Milan to the enthusiastic reception of the city officials, the Palestinian community and their European friends and families.

Distinguished guests ranged from writers Suad Amiry and Salman Natur, film directors Michel Khleifi, photographer Rula Halawani, singer-activist Rim Banna, poet Zuhair Abu Shayeb, writer-journalist Akram Musallam and poets Nasr Jamil and Asmaa Azaizeh, and many others.

At the heart of the festival, which included performances, poetry readings and film series, was also a tribute to the late Palestinian scholar and public intellectual Edward W Said (1935-203).

A conference on Said was held on October 5 at Palazzo Marino – Sala Alessi – Piazza Della Scala – right across from the historic Scala opera house. Younger and more senior scholars from various universities in Italy exchanged ideas on the significance of Edward Said’s legacy.

The panelists included: Wasim Dahmash (Università degli Studi di Cagliari), Paolo Branca (Università Cattolica, Milano), Marco Gatto (Università della Calabria), Mauro Pala (Università di Cagliari) and Mariantonietta Saracino (Università Sapienza, Roma).

Rim Banna 

Particularly memorable in this event was the featuring of Palestinian singer Rim Banna in the very last night of Philastiniat. Born (1966) and raised in Nazareth, and educated in the Higher Music Conservatory in Moscow, Rim Banna is a Palestinian singer and composer who was initially celebrated for her endearing renditions of old Palestinian folk songs.

She has now emerged as a major voice in Palestinian music of resistance, giving melodic interpretations to the suffering of her people and their defiant hopes and aspirations. In pain and suffering, defiance and struggle, confidence and pride, Palestine sings in Rim Banna.

Listening to Rim Banna (here is a sample from her album “Maraya’ al-Ruh” – The Mirrors of My Soul) is an experience in living through the trials and tribulations of Palestinians, as their newborns are sung to by the lullabies of their resistance, their youngsters are point blank shot dead by Israeli soldiers and settlers alike, and as their heroes are loved and admired for their resistance.

Rim Banna sings love songs for towering Palestinian men and women, bearing witness to their people’s struggles, raising and protecting their children against a vicious killing machine that has occupied their homeland – and the result is the creation of a repertoire of folkloric and contemporary songs that have now blended into each other to become the common staple of Palestinian lives and resistances.

From her renditions of Palestinian lullabies to her lovingly flirtatious “Mash’al”, to her “Tayr Hawa” – Fly Love, Rim Banna’s ballads of Palestine have become integral to her people’s stories of struggles and resistance.

In beautiful and yet heart-wrenching songs like “Sarah“, Rim Banna transforms the brutal murder of young Palestinian children by Israeli army or their obscene settlers into unforgettable ballad, contemporary folksongs of her people.

As in the cases with jazz, blues, or ragtime, Rim Banna’s ballads derive their power from their deep-rooted connections to her people’s struggles.

Listening to and watching Rim Banna perform, you can hear Umm Kulthum in Egypt, Edith Piaf in France, Joan Baez in the US, or Mercedes Sosa in Argentina. In her voice and in her songs, she has wed the stories of her people to defiant joys of people around the globe. It is as if it has been the fate of Palestinians in their heart and soul to travel around the world and in the best and the most beautiful everywhere, find a way to tell and share their stories.

They say that the United States is the most powerful country on planet earth and when the Israeli Prime Minister goes to the US congress to deliver yet another vulgar and inane speech, there are so many standing ovations for him by the even more vulgar and inane members of the US congress that they probably spent more time on their feet applauding their Israeli benefactor than seating on their chairs thinking of their duties to the people who had elected them.

But what has AIPAC really bought for Israel with such obscene display of power – turning the democratic institution of a nation into the Joker-Jack-in-the-Box of a bankrupt ideology – when with one single, beautiful and powerful song, Rim Banna can make the whole world rise up and sing with Palestine?

Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York. Among his books is his edited volume, Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema(2006).

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.
Source:
Al Jazeera

THE 7ARAKAT CONFERENCE: THEATRE, CULTURAL DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION

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Friday 2nd and Saturday  3rd of November 2012 – Melbourne australia

The conference will explore practice, research and advocacy in the performing arts with a particular focus on Palestinian Theatre, Arab/Australian Theatre, and Applied Theatre with refugee/migrant groups. The conference will bring together theatre-makers, scholars, creative producers and community development workers to examine various issues of exclusion within the sector of performing arts and the theatre’s role in providing networks of participation and social inclusion.

For information and to register