From: fahs@ecf.toronto.edu (FAHS Samir M)
Subject:  Interesting Films by Palestinian Director.
Organization: University of Toronto, Engineering Computing Facility
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 02:04:19 GMT


                   Cinematheque Ontario Presents Three films 
                        by Talented Palestinian Director
                                 Michel Khleifi 

                                       at
                           The Art Gallery of Ontario
                                   Jackman Hall
                                317 Dundas St. West
                                  T O R O N T O  


The Movies are:
                (1)  The Fertile Memory      (1980)
                     Friday, November 27, 8:45 p.m.

                (2)  Wedding in Galilee      (1987)
                     Monday, November 30, 6:30 p.m.

                (3)  Canctile of the Stones. (1990)
                     Monday, November 30, 8:45 p.m. 

Fertile Memory will be preceded by the 30-minute documentary "Ma'loul" (1991).

Khleifi was born in Nazareth in 1950, emigrated to Europe in 1970 and launched
his career making documentaries for Belgian television.

James Quandt, Director of programming for Cinematheque Ontario, desribed khleifi as poetic rather than polemical.  He said that Khleifi's films reflect his
desire to "sing and interrogate the (Palestinian) national identity" as 
Khleifi himself put it, emphasizing the dialectic of celebration and critique
in his films.

In this posting, only one of the movies and the documentary will be 
introduced to be followed up later with briefings on the other two.


 
THE FERTILE MEMORY:
(99 minutes)

Acclaimed at the Berlin, Cannes and London film festivals, this now classic
documentary focuses on two Palestinian women -a West Bank writer and Khleifi's
own aunt- living under occupation.  Farah Hatoum is a widow in her fifties
who lives in Galilee.  Carrying on the oral tradition of Palestinians, she
nurtures the hope that she will regain a small piece of land expropriated
in 1948.  Sahar Khalifeh is a novelist living in Ramallah on the occupied
West Bank.  Married when she was ten years old,  she was divorced thirteen
years later after a fierce struggle to gain custody of her two daughters.
Attentive to the role of women in history, and to the rich communal life
of the Palestinian, Khleifi's first feature is more poetic than polemical.
"The two most remarkable sequences consist simply of conversations among
women as they work together preparing elaborate meals-these passionate
and often humorous exchanges provide a real insight into the plight of
dispossessed Plaestinians".

Preceded By:

Ma'loul (1991):
(30 min)

A lovely film about the Palestinian community's annual trek to Ma'loul, 
where they picnic on the site of the village in which their families once
lived.  Destroyed by the Israeli armed forces in 1948, Ma'loul was left in 
rubble, which was eventually swallowed up by a forest.  "We filmed this
very special day the meeting with the stone, a widow, a wall, an olive-tree,
a pomegranate tree subsisting in the woods...Among the young pines, 
a peasant looks for uncertain marks of his lost world. A family reconstruct
their village fresco with the naive purity of their memory.  Following the
official programme, a teacher explains the founding of the state of Israel
to his arab students.  These are the various components of reality
which come together and create the film.  Through them, a new dimension
is given to the Israeli-Palestinian problem: Time." (Khleifi) 
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