When the CIA wanted to make an animated version of George Orwell's Animal Farm, they went to a small animation firm in London called Halas and Batchelor. The film turned 60 this month and is as relevant as it was on the day it opened.
Friday
Halas And Batchelor's Animal Farm At 60
When the CIA wanted to make an animated version of George Orwell's Animal Farm, they went to a small animation firm in London called Halas and Batchelor. The film turned 60 this month and is as relevant as it was on the day it opened.
Monday
Nadav Schirman: The Green Prince
Israeli director Nadav Schirman discusses his award-wining documentary, The Green Prince
Any
hope that Israelis and Palestinians will ever be able to live in
peace feels precariously close to being snuffed out by the current
wave of violence in Jerusalem. But before everyone gives up in
despair, a compelling new documentary, The
Green Prince,
shows that sworn enemies from opposite sides of the conflict can not
only become allies, but close friends.
The film has captured the
Israeli imagination. When its protagonists, Mosab Hassan Yousef - the
eldest son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a founding leader of Hamas - who
became a spy for Israel's security agency, Shin Bet, and Gonen Ben
Yitzhak, his former handler, walked nervously out on stage following
the film's first screening in Tel Aviv, the audience, including
representatives from Mossad, Shin Bet, and the media, gave them an
eight-minute standing ovation.
“This
never happens in Israel,” says the film's Jerusalem-born director,
Nadav Schirman. “The people getting standing ovations is like Zubin
Mehta and the Philarmonic Orchestra.
Movies
don't get them. Israelis are very cynical. But they were applauding
Mosab and Gonen.
They
were applauding the relationship.”
Informed
by Schirman's fascination with identity, The
Green Prince revolves
around intense and searching direct-to-camera interviews in which
Mosab and Gonen candidly describe how the bond they developed in
their fight against terrorism put them at odds with their respective
worlds.
Mosab,
who appeared on TV condemning Hamas during the recent Gaza conflict,
told his story in the memoir, Son
of Hamas,
following a move to the United States. Schirman says The
Green Prince,
named after the Palestinian's Shin Bet codename, is very different.
“The
book was his point of view. This is about the relationship between
him and Gonen. I'm not a journalist. It's not about facts and the
interpretation of facts. It's about emotions and storytelling.” He
needed to know, then, that the men “would allow me to lead them
into the darkest corners of their own narrative.”
His
first rendezvous with Mosab, in the lobby of a New York hotel,
coincided with the announcement that Osama Bin Laden had been killed.
Right away, Mosab told Schirman they should visit Ground Zero.
“Literally
within the first few minutes of meeting the son of a Hamas leader, we
were in a taxi going down town to Ground Zero. There were thousands
of young Americans screaming, 'America! America!', as if they'd won
the World Cup. I remember watching Mosab and he was really trying to
partake in this celebration. It was fascinating, because years
earlier he would have cheered for the other side.”
During
the first Gulf War, in fact, Mosab had stood on a roof-top in
Ramallah doing just that as Scud missiles flew towards Tel Aviv. And
when the first intifada erupted, he'd hero-worshipped the “masked
men” of Hamas who set out to spill Israeli blood. “Mosab wanted
to be one of them but he wasn't allowed, ironically, because of his
father's position,” says Schirman.
Hate
and anger were part of the environment, and Hamas used them “as a
political tool”.
At
17, Mosab was arrested for smuggling guns. After extensive
interrogation, he agreed to work for the Shin Bet. He still wanted to
kill an Israeli, and secretly plotted to murder Gonen. But after
spending time in prison as a ruse to get him closer to Hamas'
leaders, and seeing the brutal way that the group dealt with
suspected collaborators in its ranks, the Palestinan's moral compass
started to shift.
Schirman
recalls that Mosab had also been shocked by the way that the
organisation used civilian children as shields during the second
intifada. “He talked to me about violent demonstrations that he
would go to where they put children in the first row to go against
tanks, because the leaders knew it was good for the media.” They
even used slogans about building “our pride on the blood of our
children”.
Still,
they weren't as bad as Shin Bet, or so people claimed. “The word on
the street in Palestinian society,” says Schirman, “is that
they're going to force you to have sex with your sister and mother,
and make a video tape and bring them back the video tape so that they
can force you to do things for them.” Instead, Mosab found in Gonen
someone who encouraged him to pursue his education, pray, and be a
good son.
He
explained that in the process of changing sides, he “chose to be
with people who favour life rather than death,” says Schirman. “In
his environment you had to die, be a martyr, whereas the Shin Bet
very much wanted him to be alive. Obviously for their own aims, but
there was a deeper philosophical sense with this, too.”
Mosab
became his father's closest aide and gatekeeper, secretly passing
intercepted communications between him and other Hamas leaders to the
Shin Bet. He helped thwart terrorist attacks, and saved Israeli and
Palestinian lives. His father regarded him as a traitor when he
learned the truth. In a story that's riddled with irony, however, he
would have been assassinated if Mosab hadn't been working for Israel.
Today,
they are separated by geography, religion and ideology. Hassan
publicly denounced Mosab for his betrayal, but he had no choice,
claims Schirman. “Had his father endorsed him, the whole family
would have been killed. When Hassan tried to make peace with the
Israelis when Mosab was still there, he was shot at in a drive-by
shooting in Ramallah. So they don't joke.”
Mosab's
love for his family, and his sadness at losing them, is palpable in
The
Green Prince.
His experiences with the Shin Bet, however, have expanded his
horizons beyond the “very fundamental, very religious environment”
in which he was raised, creating a wide divide.
“He
learned about democracy, he taught himself about different religions,
he became a Christian, but in a spiritual way not in a religious way,
he learned about Judaism.
He
took off the blinds, in a way,” says Schirman, “whereas he knows
that his family is very much stuck in that world with the blinds on.
That is very frustrating for him and
I think he believes that only
when they are able to take off the blinds and think freely, will they
be able to connect again.”
And
therein, at least in part, perhaps, lies the secret of a future
peace. Most encouraging, though, is the deep and lasting bond of
trust that developed between Mosab and Gonen. The latter lost his job
over breaking protocols for his charge, and risked being
accused of treason, Schirman claims, when he went public with his
story for the first time in The
Green Prince: a
film, ultimately, about humanity triumphing over the seemingly
insurmountable differences fuelling the Middle East conflict.
“When
an Israeli meets a Palestinian one on one, it's all good,” says the
director. “They share the same sense of humour. They like the same
food. They're very close. I believe in people and I believe that
things are going to work out, somehow. I know that there's nothing on
the horizon to indicate this right now, but I think it's going to
work out.”
The
Green Prince is on general release
© Stephen Applebaum, 2015
© Stephen Applebaum, 2015
Saturday
On The Bride's Side - The National
Smuggling Syrians out of Italy: a fake wedding, a political act and also a documentary film
After highlighting the issue of illegal migration from parts
of the Middle East at the 71st Venice Film Festival, the brave and
poignant documentary On the Bride’s Side will this week return to the city where it was conceived when it screens at the Milan Film Festival.
“Last year, 11,000 Syrians arrived in Italy,” says the Italian filmmaker Gabriele Del Grande, a journalist and creator of the migration-watch blog Fortress Europe. “This year, until now, it’s maybe double.”
In September 2013, Del Grande was working in Syria as a freelance reporter. Soon after coming home, two vessels carrying migrants from Libya sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa, killing dozens.
Suddenly, “hundreds of Syrians arrived in Milan,” says Del Grande. “There were no reception centres. All the people were living on the street and in the central station.”
Del Grande and a friend, Khaled Soliman Al Nassiry, a Palestinian-Syrian poet, went to see what was happening and were approached by Abdullah, a young survivor.
“We were talking in Arabic and he came and asked us if we knew the platform for the train to Sweden,” says Del Grande. “I said: ‘My friend, there’s no train to Sweden. Sorry. But come with us and we’ll drink a coffee.’”
Del Grande introduced Al Nassiry to a Milanese filmmaker friend, Antonio Augugliaro, and the three of them decided to help Abdullah get out of Italy and find asylum.
“One night we were eating and drinking,” says Del Grande, “and I said: ‘Why don’t we do a [fake] wedding? The police are never going to stop a wedding.’”
They would be breaking the law and risking their own liberty. Nonetheless, he says: “We felt we were doing the right thing.
“Of course, we were afraid. We’re not heroes. Also, we’re not expert smugglers. So we were really, really afraid.”
Del Grande felt, however, that he owed a debt to the people who had helped him in Syria.
“When I went last time, I was travelling with civilian activists,” he says. “I didn’t have the protection of the Free Syrian Army or a fixer. It’s thanks to those people that I am still alive – young people like me. Activists. So then the day comes when you have to help somebody else.”
In just two weeks, the three men planned the entire journey and found four more Syrians to join Abdullah in seeking political asylum. The wedding party was rounded out with like-minded activists. The part of the bride was played by a German-passport bearing Syrian-Palestinian who had fled from Yarmouk.
“We wanted to help Abdullah because he’s our friend,” says Del Grande. “But we also wanted it to be a political act, not only a film.”
The group left Milan on November 14, unsure whether they’d be arrested before reaching Stockholm. For reasons of art and historical continuity, they completed the first part of the journey on foot, following a mountain path into France that was once used by Italians escaping fascism.
All five of the migrants eventually received political asylum. But the filmmakers are now waiting to see whether they will be charged and put on trial for assisting in irregular migration, a crime that carries a prison sentence of up to 15 years in Italy. If this happens, Del Grande says they will use the process to highlight the migration issue.
“Who is wrong? What we did or the laws?” he asks. “Who is responsible for all that death in the sea? Is it the storm or the law?
“If you ask my opinion, I am for the freedom of movement of everybody. You don’t need to come from the war – but it’s even stronger if you do.
Read more: http://www.thenational.ae/arts-lifestyle/film/smuggling-syrians-out-of-italy-a-fake-wedding-a-political-act-and-also-a-documentary-film#ixzz3L9zd787u
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Wednesday
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