Jerusalem International Film Festival

"I think you're some kind of Genie" my friend said to me after we had taken our seats at Sultan's Pool outside the old city walls of Jerusalem, which had been turned into a makeshift giant outdoor movie theater for the Jerusalem International Film Festival opening. This was not a drive-in, mind you, but a sit-in for several thousand of us.

It seemed whatever I wanted or asked for that day, voicing it to her, got given to us. Like getting free tickets to the sold-out film festival opening, which featured the animated film "Ratatouille". I had stood at one of the entrances to the place and simply asked passers-bye if they had any extra tickets. I do it every year. This year, some off-duty cops gave us their extras, which were complementary. I called my friend that afternoon, telling her that last year, it got terribly cold and sweaters weren't enough. Could she please bring a blanket. She didn't have anything light to bring and I hoped for the best. But when we got in, the cellphone company, Orange, were giving out free blankets.

"OK - if that's how it's gonna be for us tonight, then the gates of heaven are open. What do you want?"

"A normal man for me to marry with a good job" was her wish. I wish her wish was my command. We'll see in 6 months if I have genie power.

Too bad I had that Carlsberg because even though the movie was fun, liquor and I don't mix well and I felt myself dozing off a few minutes at a time during the middle of the movie.

No big name US/European screen stars or directors were there. Last year Jeff Goldblum and Debra Winger showed up. This year? Nada.

My friend and I continued our tradition of spending a bit of Friday and all day Saturday pasted to the Cinemateque seats.

I saw: Citizen Nawi - a movie about a gay Israeli man, Ezra Nawi, who had a Palestinian partner, who lives in West Jerusalem. He is a tireless activitist for Palestinian human rights, working mostly in the South Hebron hills, who speaks fluent Arabic and is there for their every need - whether it's to get an ambulance over to their village, whether it's to try and stop house demolitions, whether it's to help build a medical clinic in the poor town of Twane, or to escort children to their school, because of settler harrassment. He also faces constant police harrassment in his neighborhood.

I don't know Ezra personally but I have gone olive picking a number of times and he was there. I remember one frightening moment, near the settlement of Avigail in South Hebron hills, where the settlers pointed guns at us. We were only going to help Palestinians plow the land, not invade their settlement. A soldier followed behind Nawi as he walked away from the now-swelling crowd and followed him for a good 7 minute walk across the hills, where Ezra simply took a whiz against a wall. We all saw this and had a great laugh. His sense of humor showed throughout the film.

Saturday I saw Yoga, Inc. - a documentary about how commercial Yoga has become. The funniest moment was the interview of the head Fuck Yoga, Inc, who started his company when his wife was just going to Yoga, morning, noon and night. And he just said - Fuck this. Fuck Yoga.

"They walk around with their yoga mats, like it's a fucking goddam Torah"

His Fuck Yoga t-shirts and bottled water and slippers and god-knows-what-else are selling like hotcakes.


The movie - The Good German - was showed afterwards. A good black&white Hollywood mystery, set in post-world war II Berlin.

DEUX JOURS A PARIS was the next film starring Julie Delpy and Adam Goldberg. I don't think there was a minute in that film where I wasn't laughing my ass off. An American in Paris could be really frickin' funny.

For a more serious movie - RED WITHOUT BLUE - a documentary about male identical twins growing up in Montana and the difficulties they faced. Talk about challenges. Outwardly they looked like your typical white, Christian, American apple pie family. But as they years went on - one turned out to be gay, and the other changed his gender.

The last one we saw that day was "Killer of Sheep", a film made in 1977 by Charles Burnett but only released now because of music rights difficulties. It was a slow-moving film, but it was an interesting insight to an African-American slum and the people who live inside it - specifically the Watts section of Los Angeles. The music was great and I would have loved to have bought the soundtrack - but I don't think there'll be a soundtrack.

My kids and Hubby would have rathered I'd have been home all day with them, listening to them complain all day, instead of enjoying myself. Tough decision.

Preggers

My daughter is due any day now. She's miserable, anxious, nervous, happy, worried, and feels like a blimp even though she has a cute bubble belly. She keeps on calling me up with an update on her contractions which are the Braxton Hicks ones. I tell her not to go to the hospital unless she has pain that she can't walk, stand, sit, etc. It's nervewracking when you've never been through it before.

Her labor coach and my friends and me are all telling her to have sex to bring on the real contractions, but she doesn't want to hear about it. It's always "MOM!" when I bring the subject up, that I was glad when her British midwife brought it up.

Yesterday, she carried home 7 bottles of sodas which is HER idea of bringing on real labor. Like mother, like daughter. She'd rather lug heavy items for miles in hot weather than have sex.

I've bought tickets for the Jerusalem Film Festival later on this week - I look forward to this event all year. And who knows if she'll ruin all my plans by bringing my grandkid into the world during the festival. But nevertheless, however the wind blows will be totally welcome.

Home Sweet Home

After 12 years of living in rental hell, with landlords who made us nervous, who threatened us with letters, who made us move when we were comfortable in their place, who wanted to sell, who wanted to renovate - we are finally in our own place. It's far from finished, but because Hubby wanted to do it "his way", much of the place is not done. We do not have any doors, nor kitchen, nor a window in the bathrooms - but the floor is tiled and we have 2 working toilets and 1 sink. It feels as though we're camping out. Once we got the keys to the apartment,we scooted in like we won a million bucks. Others didn't want to move in. Israelis like their homes spotless first, with everything in working order. Most kitchens don't have ovens and cooktops yet, so most tenants are waiting it out. But we were tired of waiting and went in to this untamed apartment very happily.

I'm cooking meals at my daughter's place, and she doesn't mind, because she was only too happy to get rid of our boxes, plastic bags and other shit we had lying around her house, cluttering up her life.

And the neighbors across in the next building can watch us pee if they really look hard enough, but if you're nimble, you can quickly stand up and pull those pants up real fast before they can catch a quick glance. I've got it down to a tee.

Here's some pics of how the place looks - without doors, and a finished toilet - but we're in love, nonetheless....





Main bathroom


Dining area - bare kitchen

movin' on

We finally moved out of our rental apartment. The only thing sad about leaving was leaving the stray kitties behind, as I was one of their main food providers. But I was glad to leave behind a landlord who complained about our having "burnt" the grass in her front yard and the fact that I don't pay my bills the day she gives them to me and the fact that she hoards our mail and doesn't give it to us for 2 weeks.

I wanted to do the right thing and cleaned up her apartment before she had a final look at it. Hubby hired a young Palestinian man - about 21 years old, a really good-looking guy, who immediately began "talking" sex to me as soon as Hubs ran out the door for an errand. I had began our work together by telling him about my interfaith activities and how much I learn from the Koran. I wanted to talk Prophet Mohammed and Suras with him, but he had something else on his mind.

"How long is your husband gone for?"

"1/2 hour" I said. I should have said "5 minutes" because no sooner had I finished my sentence he was like "last time I cleaned an apartment building, this married woman with a child asked me to have sex with her."

I looked at him incredulously. Is he kinda coming on to me in a 'round about way? I'm over twice his age!! Is he that desperate?

He continued..."And you wouldn't believe what happened to me last week. This MAN invited me to have a look in his apartment. I thought, 'I must be mad going into a stranger's home.' The guy said he'd pay me whatever I want if I had sex with him."

"Really? You should have asked for several thousand shekels." I answered, without looking at him.

"Do you know any girls, or women - who are divorced - that would go out with me, who need to have sex?"

"Well, looks like you're not getting any on your side, am I right?"

Of course I am right. He told me he'd never marry anyone who would have sex with him before marriage. And it was totally wrong for a Moslem girl to "do it" but Israeli girls "do it" at age 15. So he's looking for me to find him a sex partner. An Israeli one - of course. Maybe even one of my daughters who doesn't have a boyfriend. He gave me his cellphone number and after I told Hubby about our time alone (I hadn't been this happy to see Hubby return home in years), his phone number went into the trash bin.

The next day we all moved into my married and heavily pregnant daughter's home and she was terribly miserable having us all there. She was looking at her precious floors and the food in the fridge, knowing in a matter of hours, her family, like locusts, would empty out her food supplies. She'd see imaginary footprints on her floor and huff about "having to wash her floor - yet again". She didn't make anyone feel welcome and I do hope that we will be able to move into our place this week -

so we could enjoy the fact that there would be no more movers, no more cleaners, no more landlords - or miserable daughters - for ever after.....

videos of Tantur Peace Festival, Jerusalem

I know I'm no Spielberg or anything, and this wasn't even taken by a video camera - just my old and worn Canon A75. But you can get the drift of Israelis and Palestinians grooving together and hanging out, listening to each other's music.



Palestinian Hip Hop




It Takes a Revolution – Palestinian Hip Hop



Jewish prayers to Indian music



Debka dancing

Peace Festival at Tantur

This Palestinian Hip Hop band was cute. Don't remember the name of the band. But it was great to hear their music....

Peace Festival in Jerusalem

Palestinian/American comedian Ray Hanania opened up his set on Friday night by telling us “either you must be hard core peace activists or you’re homeless”. It was friggin’ freezing that evening and we were moved from the outside venue to the more intimate auditorium inside Tantur, where IPCRI and it’s leaders Gershon Baskin/Hanna Siniora had organized a full afternoon/evening of Palestinian/Israeli music, workshops and films on Friday and Saturday.



And like the scent of jasmine which entices me or, to better describe this, it’s like a heavy addiction that these wonderful peace activities give me. And so when I found out about this event a few weeks ago, I cooked a quickie Sabbath meal for my family on Friday and ran out the door to catch the last bus into Jerusalem.
It was a chance for Israelis to get to know Palestinian music and for Palestinians to hear Israeli music. We had one famous Israeli name performing on Friday, David Broza.


(David Broza performance)

The atmosphere was festive with food stands set up as well as Palestinian crafts for sale and peace organizations publicizing their stuff. Unfortunately, the crowd numbered a few hundred rather than a few thousand, which I had hoped for, but perhaps that was due to preaching to the preached and not having famous companies like Coca Cola sponsor this kind of event. Ahhh to be a ‘marketing for peace’ person. That is my dream.

(notice the Wall dividing Bethlehem and Jerusalem in the background)

The groups who were in attendance and lucky to obtain permits to enter Jerusalem, were the Peace Club in Hebron, Combatants for Peace, Windows, debka dancers from Anata and a bunch from Bethlehem. Jewish groups came from interfaith dialogue groups, Peace Now, Machsom (checkpoint) Watch and many others. Thankfully there was a lot of media there to report on the events and to capture the moment and to photograph the spontaenous circles of Jews and Palestianians who were planning future events together. I was glad to have made my business cards minutes before I left home because there were many people I gave them to. It feels great expanding this amazing circle of peace-minded friends.

Many of the people I invited to this event asked me “how do we find out about these kinds of things?” which prompted me to begin an email list of my own to promote interfaith/peace activities.


As dusk turned into night, the music was wonderful with the likes of Aliza Hava, an American new immigrant to Israel with an amazing voice who sang original songs, like ”One People, One Land” and Musicians for Peace who had a really wonderful repetoire. But we were all shivering and beginning to feel uncomfortable, so the organizers arranged for the rest of the evening to be held inside the auditorium, where Ray gave us a wonderful preview of his Israeli/Palestinian Comedy Tour, although he is the only Palestinian in the tour. I thought he was hilarious. I laughed my ass off and he was like “was that a sympathy laugh?” No, dahling. It was great seeing a fellow MidEastYouth writer, especially one who gets 3 trillion comments on every post of his. So that was actually a ”jealousy laugh” m’dear.
After Ray’s act, Israeli musicians took the stage. They were a most unusual band. The woman played a tampura (a sitar-like instrument) and sang Jewish prayers in Indian style tunes. It was hauntingly beautiful.

After them, came a Palestinian band who seemed to play klezmer music. I thought - well this is the first Palestinian klezmer band I’ve ever heard - and wanted to invite them to the Safed klezmer festival later on this summer.
I walked a brisk 45-minute walk to my friend’s home with Eliyahu, blabbing the whole way about integrated housing, how wonderful everyone is, wouldn’t it be great if this happened, or that happened and how could we get hundreds of thousands of people into this scene?

Next day I set out for Tantur from the Baka neighborhood of Jerusalem. It was much hotter than the day before. I saw a Palestinian bus from East Jerusalem - those small blue and white mini-buses with hardly any seats. I knocked on the door at a red light. The driver opened up for me and charged me a bit less than an Israeli bus and off we went. Now this was a milestone for me. One of my firsts. I had never taken Palestinian public transportation before because, well, it’s just not done. These buses usually go towards the West Bank where the passengers then pick up Palestinian yellow taxis with west bank license plates. Everyone, of course, was cordial and two men even got up from their seats to give me theirs. But I’m sure their day was rougher than mine - checkpoints and all. I decided to stand for the 10 minute ride.

Getting back to the festival, we started out by watching the film “Encounter Point.” The couple I invited walked out of the film. I ran out to see why.
“It’s just so negative. Everything here is negative.” he moaned. He obviously didn’t come the night before for the non-negative Palestinian-Woodstock-like atmosphere.

“Why don’t you just stick around and wait? The music will soon start and the whole mood will change.”

“Nah”

“How will people learn not to be negative. I know this festival is about 40 years of occupation. But I think of it as a celebration of ’40 years of being reunited with my long-lost cousins’. ”

I thought I saw him smile. Maybe he’ll stay. But he didn’t. A shame. Because even Encounter Point was very moving towards the end as Palestinians and Israelis encountered one another for the very first time. It reminded me of my own story nearly 4 years ago.



We formed chat circles and I spent the late afternoon introducing all these people to one another so that they can form new connections. It just seemed as if I were putting pieces of a puzzle together.



On the big stage were Palestinian hip-hop bands, dancers, Israeli bands, and by the last act, with an Israeli singer of Moroccan background who sang “hafla” songs, we were all dancing wildly in front of the stage, singing “Now is the time for peace”. By the time the party ended, I could really have danced all night. I was so much in a state of bliss that I exclaimed to some stunned listeners that “Peace is even better than sex.”

And now that I’m back into my work week and the tough reality of life, I really think there may even be some truth in what I said...