FESTIVAL FILM PROGRAM 2007

FILMMAKER AND SPEAKER BIOS
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Abdel Salam Shehada
Abdel Salam Shehada was born in Gaza in 1961.  He received a Bachelor’s in Computer Science and Systems Analysis from the University of Cairo in 1983. He has worked as a director, cameraman and correspondent in numerous countries for organizations like Japanese Televisions, BBC, Middle East Newspaper in London.  Since 1999 he has been Head of Production at the Ramattan News Agency.

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Alan Greig
Over the last ten years, Alan Greig has focused on the relationship between personal and political violence, and the challenges of linking individuals with social justice, personal healing with political transformation. Greig joined the Break the Silence Mural Project in early 2005 and video-documented the completion of the mural on the Apartheid Wall at Mas’ha. This is his first film. 

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Andrew Courtney & Emily Perry
Andrew Courtney is an artist, teacher and activist for social change. For many years still photography was Courtney's main focus. Portfolios of photographs made in Sandinista Nicaragua, Viet Nam, Apartheid South Africa, Cuba and the Palestine Territories remain an important part of his portfolio. In recent years filmmaking has been the focus of his work.
Emily Perry has worked to co-edit since the inception of Red Hill Films. She also is a photographer and participates with the production work, contributing still photographs during filmed interviews.

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Ayelet Bechar
Ayelet Bechar is a filmmaker and journalist.  She is a graduate of the Tel Aviv University Department of Film and Television and of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York. She has made two documentaries including Just Married. Just Married has already won Best Documentary Film award at three international film festivals. Ayelet lives in Tel Aviv, Israel with her family.

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Carolina Rivas
Carolina Rivas studied at School of Writers - of the General Society of Writers of Mexico (SOGEM) - and at University Center of Film Studies (CUEC-UNAM), where she specialized in direction and script writing. She completed theatre studies at Forum of Method Actors and Forum of Contemporary Theatre. In 2002, Carolina Rivas received a prizefrom Independent National University of Mexico (UNAM) for her play Huye de Z. Huye (Escape of Z. Escape). Since 1999, Carolina has regularly collaborated with the film magazine Movie Studies. For the last six years she has taught cinema and film making in diverse academic institutions in Mexico. 

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Cherien Dabis
Born to Palestinian immigrant parents, award-winning independent filmmaker and television writer Cherien Dabis has been recognized by the industry’s top organizations and trade publications, including the Sundance Institute, IFP and Filmmaker Magazine. A 2004 graduate of Columbia University’s Masters of Fine Arts Film program, Dabis’ short films have screened at some of the world’s top film festivals. Her latest, Make a Wish, premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, Berlin International Film Festival as well as Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival where it won the Prix de la Presse and Mention Spéciale du Jury. The film went on to win top awards in Dubai, Rotterdam, Cairo and Aspen.  She was recently honored with the L’Oréal Paris Women of Worth Vision Award at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival. Dabis holds an MFA in film from Columbia University. Her other short film credits include Memoirs of an Evil Stepmother (2004) and Little Black Boot (2003).

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Christopher Pastor
I Won’t Run is a music video produced in 2001 by Jamaica Plain, a media production company. Pastor is a member of Jamaica Plain- a multimedia production house. Called "a fine example of combining intelligent social criticism with graceful musical style" by none other than Mr. Howard Zinn, Jamaica Plain has the mission of celebrating and inspiring social justice around the world. Recently, Jamaica Plain has entered into a record deal with G7 Welcoming Committee Records, a Canadian record label dedicated to promoting social justice through music and spoken word. www.g7welcomingcommittee.com. Chris Pastor and Jamaica Plain are very proud to debut I Won't Run as part of the first annual Boston Palestinian Film Festival.

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Claire Fowler
Claire Fowler is a British filmmaker who works with documentary and experimental narratives. A graduate of the Royal College of Art and Oxford University, she divides her time between Europe, where she recently completed a 3 month artist-in-residency in Paris and the United States. Her work has screened at numerous international venues including the Rotterdam Film Festival, Rencontres Internationales Festival Paris/Berlin, Rooftop Films in New York City, and the PDX in Oregon.

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Darryl Li
PhD Candidate, Anthropology & Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University
JD Candidate, Yale Law School

Darryl Li was information officer for the Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in 2001-2002, and has made regular trips back to Gaza and Israel/Palestine since 2004. He has written on Israel/Palestine in the International Herald Tribune and the Journal of Palestine Studies, and is co-author of "Razing Rafah: Mass Home Demolitions in the Gaza Strip" (Human Rights Watch, 2004) and "Act of Vengeance: Israel's Bombing of the Gaza Power Plant and its Effects" (B'tselem: Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, 2006).

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Diana Keown Allan
Diana Allan has a doctorate in social anthropology and film from Harvard University. She is founder and co-director of The Nakba Archive and the director of Lens on Lebanon, a participatory film and photographic initiative that is currently documenting the long-term effects of the recent conflict with Israel in villages across the south. Other video documentaries include: Chatila, Beirut (2002), and Nakba (2006). Still Life was produced in collaboration with the Nakba Archive, an independent cultural, collective run by Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon. Under the co-directorship of Diana and Mahmoud Zeidan, the Nakba Archive has recorded around 500 filmed testimonies with first generation refugees about their memories of the 1948 war and their communities prior to the displacement. For more information please visit www.nakba-archive.org.

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Digital Resistance: Palestinian Youth Media
Directors: Ages 13-20 (Abeer Faris Malash, Bara’a Awad, Batul Amjad Faraj, Khaled Jamal al-Jafari, Kholoud Al-Ajarma, Linda Nidal al-Azzah, Maram Dahoud Alzghary, Miras Nidal al-Azzah, Mohanad Abu Laban, Raja Jamil Al-Nabtiti, Saddam Abbas Sadouk, Wasim Faraj) Digital Resistance: Palestinian Youth Media features digital stories created in January 2007 by youth (13-24) living in Aida and Dheisheh refugee camps in the Bethlehem area of the West Bank. These digital stories are made entirely by the youth themselves.

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Dylan Bergeson
Bergeson, a recent graduate of Fairhaven College in Bellingham, WA, completed the film as a senior project.

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Ghada Terawi
Ghada Terawi was born in Beirut in 1972 to a couple of Palestinian militants. She grew up between Beirut, Tunis & Cairo and graduated from the American University in Cairo in 1995, with a BA in International Relations. She currently lives in Palestine. She started working in the field of documentary filmmaking in 1998 and produced her first film Staying Alive in 2001.  

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Hamid Dabashi
Born on June 15, 1951 in Iran, Hamid Dabashi received his college education in Tehran, before he moved to the United States, where he received a dual Ph.D. in Sociology of Culture and Islamic Studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. He is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Professor Dabashi has written 12 books, edited 4, and contributed chapters to many more. In the context of his commitment to advancing trans-national art and independent world cinema, Professor Dabashi is the founder of Dreams of a Nation: a Palestinian Film Project which is dedicated to preserving and safeguarding Palestinian Cinema. He has two grown children and lives in New York with his wife and colleague, Golbarg Bashi.

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Hicham Kayed
Hicham Kayed is a Palestinian filmmaker living in Lebanon. He has a diploma in business administration and is the multimedia coordinator at AL-JANA / ARCPA (Arab Resource Center for Popular Arts).  He has coordinated AL-JANA's film festivals “Palestine in the New Cinema” & “Jana Int. Film Festival for Children & Youth”. He has also performed many workshops for children & youth, to express them by producing films. His films have participated in numerous festivals worldwide, and have won several international awards.

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Ido Haar
Ido Haar graduated in 2002 from The Sam-Spiegel School for Film & Television, Jerusalem . His first documentary Melting Siberia was theatrically released in Israel and was highly praised by the critics. His second documentary feature, 9 Star Hotel, also theatrically released in Israel with high praise, is about to be released in the United States and other countries worldwide.

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Juliano Mer Khamis
Juliano Mer-Khamis is a theatre actor and a film director from Nazareth.  He was born to a Jewish mother an Arab father. He has acted in films from Israel, Palestine and the USA, including “Rage and Glory” (Israel), “The Little Drama Girl” (USA), and “The Ninth Month” (Israel/Palestine). He has also directed two documentaries: “Struggle to Learn- Learn to Struggle” and “Arna’s Children”.

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Larissa Sansour
Born in Jerusalem 1973, Larissa Sansour studied Fine Art in Copenhagen, London and New York, and graduated with a master’s degree from New York University. Her work is interdisciplinary, immersed in the current political dialogue, and utilizes video, photography, experimental documentary as well as the Internet.  Sansour’s work has been exhibited worldwide in galleries, museums as well as film festivals. Her most notable shows include the Tate Modern in London, UK, in May 2007 and the National Museum of Queen Sofia in Madrid, Spain, in September 2007. Besides videos, she has recently been commissioned to create a mega-billboard for the Images of the Middle East festival that took place in Copenhagen in the summer of 2006. Sansour is currently a board member at the new concept educational school Chaos Pilots where she also contributes with her writing on arts, politics and education.  She lives and works in Copenhagen.

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Line Halvorsen
Line Halvorsen was educated at the University of Trondheim and Documentary Department at the Volda University College. Her filmography includes A Stone's Throw Away (2003), Orphan Voices (2002), Horsebacking Australia (2000), Behind the Scenes 71° North (2000).

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Lina Makboul
Lina Makboul is 33 years old and lives with her husband in Gothenburg, Sweden. Lina was born in Sweden by Palestinian parents who are from Nablus on the West Bank. She started working as a journalist at the Swedish National Radio 1996. In 1998 she began working with television at the Swedish National Television, SVT.  Leila Khaled: Hijacker is Lina's first film.

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Martin Ginestie
Having completed his Mathematics & Philosophy studies at Oxford University, Martin Ginestie worked as a picture framer for two years until his interest in Middle Eastern politics drew him to Ramallah in the West Bank. From August 2006 to July 2007, he directed three short films, including The Price of Freedom, a documentary on jailed Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti. The latter has been shown at the EU Parliament and various political events in Italy. Prior to making The Price of Freedom, Martin Ginestie worked as Director of Photography on The Zionist Dream, Massimiliano Brega’s study on the relationship between the Zionist ideology and militarism, which was selected for the Al Jazeera International Documentary Film Festival.

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Marwan El Masri
Dr. Marwan El Masri is a Palestinian American who is a resident of Groton-Mass. A founding member of the Boston chapter for the Palestine Children's Relief Fund (PCRF). He has been a volunteer with the PCRF since 2002; he hosted an injured Palestinian boy at his home in 2004 and is preparing to host another injured Palestinian child within the next two months. He also functions as the PCRF coordinator for hospital visits and host families in the Boston area. As a student he was an active member of the Palestinian Student Union in Iraq and in the UK. In the US he was a member of several fundraising committees to benefit Palestinian media programs, the PCRF, and organizations concerned with the Palestinian community in the US. He holds a PhD in organic chemistry and is a technical manager at a specialty chemicals company in Andover MA.

Maryam Monalisa Gharavi
Maryam Monalisa Gharavi has written/directed several short films, including Psychosomatic (2005), Dreams of Wingless Flight (2003), and All About My Lover (2002). She worked on feature film projects Situation Room #2 (2005) with NY-based director Steve Staso, Security (2005) with Cannes/Sundance-winning director Rob Nilsson, and most recently on the PBS television documentary Stand Up: Muslim American Comics Come of Age (2008). She has screened her work at Pacific Film Archive, Women of Color Film Festival, Anthology Film Archive, among others. Traveling extensively to Brazil, Syria, Iran, Iraq, and United Arab Emirates, she has contributed poetry and critical writing to several publications. Currently she is a doctoral candidate in Comparative Literature at Harvard University. She has worked in collective solidarity action on the Palestinian occupation for seven years.

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Mohammed Alatar
Mohammed Alatar, a Palestinian born in Jordan who lives in America, is a longtime peace activist. He founded a group, Palestinians for Peace and Democracy, a grassroots group “dedicated to educating the public about the plight of the Palestinian people and their struggle toward freedom and statehood.” He went to the West Bank to document the nature of Israeli colonial settlements, and the infrastructure of segregation that makes life so difficult for the Palestinians. Out of this experience, he directed The Iron Wall (2006), a documentary that seeks to address the central reasons for the conflict today.

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Mohammed Bakri
Mohammed Bakri was born in the Arab village of Bi'ina (see Shaghur) in the Galilee in 1953. He went to elementary school in his hometown and received his secondary education in the nearby city of Acre. He studied acting and Arabic literature at Tel Aviv University in 1973 and graduated three years later. Bakri began his professional acting career in plays in several theaters in Israel and the West Bank notably the Habima Theatre in Tel-Aviv, the Haifa theater and al-Kasaba theater in Ramallah. After a few years of acting in Palestinian and Israeli film, Bakri began to act in international films in nations such as France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and Canada. Bakri also directed two documentary films including the controversial Jenin, Jenin. Almost all of Bakri's films have been influenced by the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and internal struggles of the Palestinian people.

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Muayad Mousa Alayan
Muayad Mousa Alayan is a Jerusalem-based young Palestinian filmmaker and cultural activist. Alayan received his degree in film production from the City College of San Francisco in 2005. Upon returning to Palestine, Alayan initiated, designed and conducted a filmmaking workshop for youth in his village, Beit Safafa. He also organized a year-long film screening program in the suburbs of East Jerusalem. Simultaneously, Alayan has been carrying out freelance work. Since March 2007, Alayan has been directing a TV debate show at the International Center of Bethlehem. Alayan's documentary Exiles in Jerusalem has also been selected and screened in the City Shorts film Festival in San Francisco, in the Cinema Arabe Film Festival in Amsterdam, and at the Toronto Alucine Latino Film Festival. Currently, Alayan is in the pre-production stages for his upcoming narrative film.

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Nada El-Yassir
Nada El-Yassir left the field of neurophysiology for cinema a few years ago. Her work ranges from fiction to documentary to experimental. She presently lives in Nazareth. Her filmography includes All That Remains, 2005; Na’im: Strangers in Paradise, 2002; 4 Songs for Palestine, 2001; Sarab, 16 mm, 2000; Suheir (2000); Branch off a Tree, 2000; Of Memories and Other Dislocations, 1998; Mirror, Mirror, 16 mm, 1998.

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Nahed Awwad
Born in Beit Sahour/Palestine in 1972, Nahed Awwad received a diploma in Radio & Television Communication. She directed her first film, Going for a Ride in 2002, this won the second prize (Palente) at the Ramallah International Film Festival in 2004.   She is currently working on a new film with the working title: You are landing at Al-Quds Airport.

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Nicole Ballivian
Born and raised in Washington DC, Nicole received a BA in Film from American University in 1997 and underwent a Master of Arts program in Islamic and Social Sciences from the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences in Virginia in 1999. In 2002, Nicole formed BintFilm with Anas Khalaf as a production company dedicated to filmmaking for the mass conscience. Residing in both Los Angeles and Jerusalem for the past seven years, Nicole’s screenwriting and directorial debut launched in 2006 for the political comedy feature film, DRIVING TO ZIGZIGLAND. DRIVING TO ZIGZIGLAND premiered in the Middle East, in competition, at Cairo International Film Festival in November 2006 and in December went on to screen at the Dubai International Film Festival under Official Selection, Arabian Nights. In November 2006, for her screenplay, SLEEPING ON STONES, Nicole was selected as a screenwriter fellow at the Sundance Institute - Royal Jordanian Film Commission 2nd Middle East Screenwriter’s Lab.

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Nida Sinnokrot
Nida Sinnokrot is a Palestinian-American artist and filmmaker and carpenter. His films, installations and sculptures often explore the complex political realities of Diaspora through a phenomenological approach. After completing his undergraduate studies in Film at the University of Texas at Austin, Nida moved to New York where he received an MFA in Film and Video from Bard College. Nida attended the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program in 2001, is a 2002 Rockefeller Media Fellow, and was recently awarded a Paul Robeson media grant. In 2006 Nida's directing and producing credits include his award winning feature documentary Palestine Blues, currently playing in festivals throughout Europe and the USA. Palestine Blues is Nida's first feature film. Nida currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

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Nimer Sultany
Nimer Sultany is a Palestinian SJD candidate at Harvard Law School. He worked as a human rights lawyer in the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and as the head of the Political Monitoring Project at Mada al-Carmel - The Arab Center for Applied Social Research. He has published numerous articles and books on the Palestinian question including: Citizens without Citizenship (2003), Israel and the Palestinian Minority 2003 (2004), and Israel and the Palestinian Minority 2004 (2005). He also co-authored Voting Without Voice (2004) and co-founded and co-edited Mada Akhar, a critical sociopolitical bi-annual journal. He served as the coordinator for the Public Committee Against Trans-Israel Highway.

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Palestinian Filmmakers' Collective
Founded in late 2005, the Palestinian Filmmakers' Collective is a totally independent, volunteer-based collective founded and run by filmmakers. Our goals include working with our community to screen films, share our technical and artistic skills, and help make Palestinian films and information more widely available, create a Palestinian video library and organize activities and projects that promote Palestinian cinema.

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Peter Snowdon and Rima Essa
Rima Essa was born and brought up in the north of Israel, close to the Lebanon border. She became the first Palestinian director to graduate from the Sam Spiegel Film School in Jerusalem. Her first film, a documentary portrait of her father, Ashes (2002), has been widely shown at film festivals. Most recently, she co-directed Hole in the Wall (2006) for the Alternative Information Centre, Jerusalem.
Peter Snowdon was born and brought up in Northumberland, England. He has lived and worked in Paris and Cairo, and has travelled widely in Asia and the Middle East. Returning to Europe in 2000, he set up Gourna Films to produce low-budget digital documentaries for grassroots citizens’ groups. 

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Rana Kazkaz
Rana Kazkaz has lived, worked, travelled and studied in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Algeria, Egypt, Russia, France, South Africa and the United States.  Led by a strong desire for global exchange, Rana has earned a reputation as a director, writer, actor and producer with a passion for stories from the Middle East.  Kazkaz has spent the past six years developing a feature film GIBRAN, about the life of famed Lebanese-American author of The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran.  Her GIBRAN screenplay was an official selection of the Tribeca Film Festival All Access Program (2005) and was selected to participate in the first Middle East Screenwriter's Lab held in Amman, Jordan sponsored by the Royal Film Commission of Jordan in Association with the Sundance Institute (2005) and most recently by Mediterranean Films Crossing Borders at the Cannes Film Festival (2007).  Rana holds an MFA in Acting from Carnegie Mellon University/Moscow Art Theater and a BA from Oberlin College and currently lives between Syria and the US.

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Suha Arraf
Suha Arraf was born in 1969 in the village of Mi’ilya to a Palestinian family. She got her BA degree in Philosophy and Literature at Haifa University (1990) and her Master’s degree in Anthropology at the University of Tel Aviv (1994).  Starting as a journalist of Haaretz newspaper she moved to television where she directed documentary programs and hosted and edited a program for Channel 2. Her move to film started when she began to direct and write scripts for documentaries for Channel 2. The Syrian Bride was her first feature film screenplay.  Hard Ball is her first feature-length documentary.

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Tariq Nasir
Tariq Nasir was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, to an American mother and a Palestinian father. He grew up in Palestine until just after the 1967 war, when as refugees, his family moved to Jordan. He attended university in London, receiving a degree in International Business in 1985. In 2004, Tariq retired from his position at a large investment firm and committed himself to finding his voice as a documentary filmmaker. He attended the New York Film Academy in 2004, and started his own production company, Unusuality Productions in 2005. Belonging is his first film.

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Walid Yassir
Dr. Walid Yassir is a Palestinian-American surgeon who lives in Brookline, MA. His family left Yaffa, Palestine in 1948 to become refugees in Lebanon, where many of them still live today. He began is volunteer work with the Palestinians over 20 years ago at Columbia University while an undergraduate. Upon graduation, he went to work in the Palestinian refugee camps of Lebanon with the Norwegian People's Aid. He eventually found his way to medical school in New York at the State University in Brooklyn and then to residency and practice in Boston. He is the currently Chief of Pediatric Orthopaedics and Scoliosis surgery at Tufts New England Medical Center and the Boston Floating Hospital for Children. He began working with the Palestine Children's Relief Fund (PCRF) in 2004, and will go on his 5th surgical mission in 2008.

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Zeina Durra
Zeina Durra is a writer/director based in New York City. Born and brought up in London from a Jordanian father and Bosnian/ Palestinian mother, who left Beirut and moved to London due to the civil war, her life has been a bizarre mix of security, privilege and war. It is the exploration of this contrast that inspires her current work. She has made over 15 short films. Many of which were made during her Masters at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, Graduate Film Programme. She has recently begun making art films shot on Super 8. Currently she is writing and developing her feature script, My Island, that deals with similar themes to her thesis film The Seventh Dog. My Island, was selected for the Berlin Film Festival's Talent Campus Script Lab, February, 2006. Zeina was recently informed that, My Island, has got through to the next round of selection for the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, January 2007.

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Sufyan and Abdallah Omeish
No biography available.