Film / News
Bristol Palestine Film Festival is back
You might be forgiven for assuming that the Bristol Palestine Film Festival would be full of worthy, depressing flicks about conflict. But you’d be wrong. For this year’s four-day bash, Festival Director David Owen has pulled together an eclectic programme that kicks off with a black comedy and takes in documentaries about the first all-female motor racing team in the Middle East and the experiences of gay Arabs living in Israel.
Running from December 9-12 at venues including the Watershed, Baggator (Pickle Factory) in Easton and the Arts House Café in Stokes Croft, the Festival opens with Love, Theft and Other Entanglements – a comedy-thriller in which a dim, slum-dwelling Palestinian car thief gets rather more than he bargained for when he nicks a motor with something unexpected in the boot. The fest’s other big drama is 3000 Nights, which is based on the true story of a schoolteacher wrongfully convicted of terrorism offences who gives birth to her son behind bars.
is needed now More than ever
Documentaries include Oriented, which follows three gay Palestinian friends as they explore their national and sexual identity in Tel-Aviv; Speed Sisters, centring on five young women who challenge religious and cultural norms in their determination to burn rubber across Palestine; and the return by popular demand of Bethlehem: Hidden From View, revealing the strangling and imprisonment of the ‘little town’ of Bethlehem and its impact on the local Christian community. Many of these screenings will be followed by Skype filmmaker Q&As, but festival guest Hind Shoufani will be present in person to talk about her documentary Trip Along Exodus. This takes a critical look at the last 70 years of Palestinian politics through the prism of the life of her father, Dr. Elias Shoufani – an academic and leftist intellectual who was one of the leaders of the opposition to Arafat within Fatah for 20 years.
The award-winning writer and filmmaker will also be sticking around to host a night of poetry, food and music from Chai For Three at The Palestine Museum on Saturday, December 10. Go here for the full festival programme.
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