"WALL" on The Wall in Abu-Dis

PRESS RELEASE

A FILM WILL BE SCREENED AT THE APARTHEID WALL IN RAS KUBSA IN ABU DIS ON THURSDAY, JULY 15th @ 7:30 PM

"WALL" a film by SIMONE BITTON

Under the auspices of the Ramallah International Film Festival, the Palestinian premiere of the film "Wall" by the renowned director Simone Bitton will be held on Thursday July 15th at 7:30 pm at the wall in Abu Dis. The wall itself will be used to screen the film.

The Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center is also inviting all those interested to the screening of the same film on Friday July 16th at 6pm at Al-Kasabah Theater in Ramallah.

This film was part of the Quinzaine des réalisateurs at the 2004 Cannes film festival, and won the Grand Prize at the 2004 Pezzaro Film Festival, as well as the Grand Prize at the Marseilles International Documentary Film Festival in 2004.

Simone Bitton is an internationally acclaimed filmmaker, born in 1955 in Morocco, who has directed about15 documentary films for television, about varied topics as Mahmoud Darwish (The Language as the Land), about Azmi Bishara (Citizen Bishara), about Moroccan opposition figure Mehdi Ben Barka (Ben Barka: L'equation marocaine), about Oum Kalthoum, Farid el Atrash, & AbdeWahab, about the history of Palestine (Palestine, Story of a Land), and about Palestinian bombers and their victims (Bombing).

"Wall" is her first feature-length documentary produced for the big screen, and has been called "sensational" by the French daily Libération, "an eye opener" by the US entertainment industry bible Variety, and "An hour and a half of sadness, transparency & beauty" by Al Hayat.

The film shows that the wall is in fact crossable, and thus the aim behind it is to humiliate and break people's spirits and livelihoods, rather than to achieve security goals. It is a film of images not of ideas, there is no narration or voice over, it shows the daily life of the people around the Wall, Palestinian inhabitants, Israeli settlers, the Arab migrant workers building it, passers by, and an Israeli general who tells the camera that "we view both sides as ours."

(98 minutes, 2004)

WE ENCOURAGE EVERYONE TO COME AND ATTEND