Documenta11_Press Release 25.07.2002

[Christina Carlberg]

   Press Release

   Kassel, July 24, 2002 - MM 


   Ladies and Gentlemen, dear Colleagues, 

   Today we would like to inform about the following upcoming event and
   welcome you to announce it in your editorial pages. 


   Fareed Armaly with Rashid Masharawi

   Friday, August 2, 2002, 5 to 7 p.m.


   Presentations / Discussion From/To
   Presentation by the artist Fareed Armaly, followed by a discussion with
   Fareed Armaly with Dr. Helmut Draxler, art historian (Munich) and Ute Meta
   Bauer, Co-Curator Documenta11. 

   From/To is a cartography in which participants chart out and inscribe a
   contemporary topos: Palestine. It pertains to the space of post -1948
   Palestinian diaspora, and reflects sociologist Stuart Hall’s statements on
   diasporic identity: “The history depends on the routes. It’s the
   replacement of ‘roots’ with ‘routes’.” The project’s methodology centers
   on the exchange introduced through dialogue with Palestinian producers in
   the field of media, such as video and film, as well as participants from
   different fields, such as anthropology, geography, and history. The works
   all link to communication media and spatial analysis including refugee
   camp fieldwork, oral histories, recent and historical films and videos,
   lecture series, cartography, history of postcards, or current website. 


   The new version of From/To, developed for Documenta11, condenses the 1999
   version, and structures around a new, specific axis of orientation
   established by Fareed Armaly through his invitation to Ramallah-based
   filmmaker Rashid Masharawi for a collaboration. 

   1999: first version, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam 
   2002: second version in collaboration with Rashid Masharawi, Documenta11,
   Kassel. 


   Location: Small Bali Cinema at Kulturbahnhof Kassel 
     

   Friday, August 2, 2002, 8 to 10 p.m.


   On the production of documentary film production through two recent
   Palestinian examples:
   Rashid Masharawi’s Live from Palestine (2001)
   Mai Masri’s Frontiers of Dreams and Fears (2001)

   Frontiers of Dreams and Fears will be presented before the discussion in
   the Small Bali Cinema. Frontiers of Dreams and Fears has received 9 awards
   in film festivals, recently receiving ”Best Documentary” in both the
   International Women’s Film Festival in Torino, Italy 2002; Biennale des
   Cinémas Arabes IMA in Paris, France 2002. 


   Live From Palestine is available to be seen in the cycle of films from
   Rashid Masharawi as part of the continuing Documenta11 film program. Live
   from Palestine has received international television broadcasts and most
   recently awarded in July, the Special Jury Award for Best feature-length
   Documentary at the Biennale des Cinémas Arabes IMA in Paris, France 2002. 

   The screening will be followed by a discussion with the Palestinian
   filmmakers Rashid Masharawi and Mai Masri moderated by Mark Nash,
   co-curator Documenta11. 


   (Both presentations / discussions will take place in English.) 

   Location: Small Bali Cinema at Kulturbahnhof Kassel 


   Rashid Masharawi’s films will be screened on the following dates and times
   as part of the Documenta11 film program: 

   August 5, 22.15 
   August 13, 17.00 
   August 17, 22.15 
   August 23, 17.00 
   September 4, 22.15 
   September 10, 17.00 
     


   For any further concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us again 

   With best regards 


   Markus Müller 
   Director of Communication 
   Documenta11 
   Friedrichsplatz 18 
   D-34117 Kassel 
   Fon +49.561.70 72 7 50 
   Fax + 49.561.70 72 7 58 
   www.documenta.de 

   ------------------------------------------------ 


   Rashid Masharawi’s Live from Palestine (2001)
   Mai Masri’s Frontiers of Dreams and Fears (2001)

   Further Information about the films and the filmmakers:
     


   For almost 15 years now, the works from Palestinian filmmakers Rashid
   Masharawi and Mai Masri have offered two unique Palestinian perspectives
   that reflect the space of the first - and now second Intifada, by how the
   films re-inscribe the actual and virtual topography of the Palestinian
   culture, landscape and refugee life. In the exhibition area of From/To,
   the selection of these two directors works emphasizes their focus on the
   subject of the refugee camp, whether in Masharawi’s fiction features
   Curfew(1993) and Haifa (1995), or in Masri’s documentary film Children of
   Shatila (1998). The subjects range from documenting life in the camps
   through evoking the pressures and frustrations of living under siege to
   portraying individuals in their daily routines, moving between refugee
   camp, work place and houses that formerly belonged to their families. The
   films touch upon the memories and desires of a population under occupation
   and the dialog between generations. They deal with the events of the
   present, the weight of the past and the hope and perspective onto a future
   that might take place not in the illegitimate space of camps anymore, but
   within the legitimate borders of a Palestinian State. 

   Rashid Masharawi (1962, Shati Refugee Camp, Gaza Strip) 


   Rashid Masharawi’s discourse joins filmmaking with founding cultural
   institutions in Ramallah – the Cinema Production Center, and the Mobile
   Cinema for refugee camps. While his features (Curfew, Haifa) and
   documentaries (Live From Palestine) have received numerous awards and
   critical recognition, Masharawi sees their value in reinforcing his
   situation, being the only Palestinian feature maker to remain in the past
   decades, living and producing within the Occupied Territories. His work
   portrays both his knowledge of living under Israeli Occupation in refugee
   camps and his constant reflection on cinema narrative. The scripts offer
   the most economic of storylines yet with relations plotted out in complex
   diagrams created by their reflections off of the hard limits of actual
   confinement. Live from Palestine, his most recent documentary, has
   received international television broadcasts and most recently awarded in
   July, the Special Jury Award for Best feature-length Documentary at the
   Biennale des Cinémas Arabes IMA in Paris, France 2002. 

   Live from Palestine
   Palestine 2001, 57 mins, BETA 


   This documentary follows the daily dynamic of ”The Voice of Palestine” -
   the official radio station for the Palestinian Authority - to offer a
   perspective on the role of this new official Palestinian media during this
   second Intifada. Beginning with radio journalists out on the street in the
   midst of covering an Israeli attack, the film proceeds to connect a
   network of paths in private and public space that all pass through the
   sender’s programming, where even the standard listener call-in program
   takes on a different level of meaning as the callers are seperated within
   different refugee camps. Over the hour many links unfold moving between
   the radio and the different communities, suggesting its potential is to
   shape a sense of identity. 
   Throughout Live From Palestine, as other PA buildings are being bombed by
   Israeli planes, in editorial meetings and in the offices the employees of
   the radio station are open about their fears of attack. The film was ready
   for distribution when the Israeli Army occupied the station, prepared each
   room with enough explosive to guarantee the equipment destruction and thus
   shut down the radio’s potential ‘voice’- its more powerful transmission
   range that links to different camps. Masharawi returns as the building
   smolders, adding an unplanned epilogue that shifts from testimony of a
   community and radio station to the witness of the destruction and the
   disorientation of a silenced radio. 

   Mai Masri (Amman, 1959) 


   Mai Masri is a Palestinian filmmaker, who after completing studies in San
   Francisco State University returned to work in Beirut and the Occupied
   Territories. She has directed, photographed and edited several
   award-winning documentaries about Beirut and Palestinian issues, (Hanan
   Ashrawi – A Woman of Her Time, Children of Shatilah, Children of Fire )
   which were broadcast on more than 100 television stations around the world
   including BBC, Channel 4, PBS, France 2, SBS, YLE, MBC and NHK. With her
   husband, filmmaker Jean Chamoun she set up Nour Productions and MTC. 

   Her recent work Frontiers of Dreams and Fears has received 9 awards in
   film festivals, recently receiving ”Best Documentary” in both the
   International Women’s Film Festival in Torino, Italy 2002; Biennale des
   Cinémas Arabes IMA in Paris, France 2002. 
     


   Frontiers of Dreams and Fears (Ahlam El-Manfa) 
   2001, 57 min. 

   Frontiers is an in-depth portrayal of the lives of Palestinian children in
   the refugee camps of Shatila (Lebanon) and Dheisha (West Bank). The 23
   year-long Israeli occupation of South Lebanon resulted in a
   kilometers-thick barrier that separated the Palestinians north of the
   occupation zone from the Israelis. The sudden evacuation of the Occupying
   forces from Lebanon in the spring of 2000 reduced the border to a few
   strands of razor wire, making it permeable to bullets or words. This film
   follows two young Palestinians through several months of their lives,
   where each of the two girl characters represents a variation on the theme
   of deprivation. But, though they have a tragic aspect, the stories aren't
   simply portraits of pathos. Frontiers exhibits an optimism that cuts
   through the cynicism of brains numbed by too much faceless violence on the
   evening news. Rather than despair, its emotional foundation is hope.