Sunday, September 30, 2012, 2:00 – 4:45 p.m.
Location: The Little Theatre, 240 East Avenue Rochester NY ~ Echo screening @ RIT on Thursday, October 18, 2012, 7:30 p.m. ~ Tickets are free from The Little box office; because of licensing arrangments for this title, we decided not to charge admission
Film run time: 1:22 ~ Style: documentary ~ Languages: English, subtitles for the parts in Arabic and Hebrew ~ Format: video projection
Budrus (pronounced BOOED-ruse) is a village of about 1,500 inhabitants located between Ramallah and Tel Aviv on the Palestinian side of the Green Line. (Open with Google Earth or Google maps.) When residents learn that Israel intends to build a separation barrier in the village, the film shows community leader Ayed Morrar organizing protests. His 15-year-old daughter, Iltezam, becomes involved and leads the women of the village to be out in front when the Border Police and bulldozers come.
Ahmed Awwad is another leader featured. He supports Hamas while Morrar favors Fatah. Morrar was in Israeli prisons five times for his resistance, the first time at age 17.
The film also interviews Israeli leaders, e.g., Doron Spielman, an IDF Captain, and Yasmine Levy of the Israeli Border Police.
Points made in this film
- The Israeli separation barrier takes Palestinian property because it is often located on the Palestinian side of the Green Line.
- Israel is building the wall because it fears terrorist attacks from Palestinians
- Israel is militarily more powerful than the Palestinians
- The wall threatens Palestinian livelihood because its construction requires destroying olive trees and takes Palestinian land
- Palestinians non-violently protested building of the wall and got its location changed
- Israelis and South Africans are shown personally and actively supporting the protests
- There are political disagreements among Palestinians
Panelists
Lana Hijazi
Lana Hijazi is a journalist and film director, from Gaza Strip and a graduate student in film at Syracuse University. During the 2009 war on Gaza, she directed the documentary film titled “The War Hates Children.” Following the war, she directed another documentary tilted “Correspondents in Gaza.”
She wrote the script and narrated “Hadeel,” a documentary film that won the judge’s committee award in Al-Jazeera 3rd Documentary Film Festival. In 2009, she had participated in the “NUFF film festival” workshop, held between Gaza and Norway, regarding the siege and blockade.
She has worked as a film director for other films like “Besieged Waters,” “Betdalha Ghorba,” “Needle and String,” “Back to Jafa,” “In Gaza: Venom=Hope,” “The Desert’s People,” and “Acrid & Honey.”
She participated in three international courses regarding media in Oxford, Egypt and New York.
And she worked in Gaza as a local manger for (City to City Project) its a project between Gaza & Tromso in Norway, which helps youth to learn more about filmmaking. Besides she worked as a senior producer for a film about Gaza Under the siege called “Inshalla.”
Gordon Webster
A former Co-Pastor of Downtown United Presbyterian Church , Gordon is a current board member of the Brian and Jean Hickey Center for Interfaith Studies and Dialogue, Nazareth College. He is the President of the American Friends of Neve Shalom/Wahat al Salam (the Oasis of Peace Village, Israel – whose residents since the 1970s have been half Jewish and half Arabic. They built an elementary school to teach their children all their lessons in both Hebrew and Arabic.) He is active in interfaith and ecumenical leadership in Rochester. He and Gloria were married at Most Holy Rosary in Syracuse.