KINO PALESTINE
curated by: Zaher Jureidini
ENG//
In light of recent and ongoing events in Palestine, we believe there is a strong need for actualizing the solidarity of Prague’s cultural spaces, and doing so collaboratively. KINO PALESTINE is a step toward this goal, specifically toward presenting images of life and resistance in Gaza, the West Bank, and the Palestinian diaspora. As we are daily confronted with victimizing, generalizing, and violent sights and narratives, and amidst ongoing efforts to silence and censor journalists and artists in Palestine and Europe, we hope that this series of screenings might provide a clearer, emboldening vision of Palestine and its people – its history, its present situation, and the freedom in its future. Initiated by Garage Gallery, KINO PALESTINE is a growing, collective effort to amplify Palestinian voices of resistance. Standing in solidarity with all victims of violence, we refuse systemic silencing.
7.12. 2023 (19:00) Academy of Fine Arts in Prague
Tale of the Three Jewels (Drama, 1995, 1h 47m)
Directed by Michel Khleifi
Yussef is a twelve-year old Palestinian child of the First Intifada. With his father in prison and his brother a fugitive from the Israeli army, he lives alone with his mother and sister. Though his life is marked by violence, he lives in his imagination, often escaping from the refugee-camp into the Gaza countryside. While hunting for birds one day, Yussef meets Aida, a young gypsy girl who poses a daunting challenge, leading him into a perilous adventure. This lyrical and moving work was shot in the early months of 1994, while Gaza remained under Israeli military occupation, and was the first feature film ever to be shot entirely in the Gaza Strip.
13.12. 2023 (19:00) Garage Gallery
Ave Maria (Short/Comedy, 2015, 14m)
Directed by Basil Khalil
In this Academy Award–nominated film, a squabbling family of Israeli settlers find themselves in a sticky situation after their car breaks down in a remote area of the West Bank. (Sabbath laws mean they can’t use phones to call for help.) Their only potential saviors? An order of Palestinian nuns—who’ve taken a vow of silence.
Ma’loul Celebrates its Destruction (Documentary, 1984, 30m)
Directed by Michel Khleifi
Since the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948, countless Palestinian villages have been erased from the map. Ma'loul Celebrates Its Destruction uses poignant images of bombardments, destroyed buildings, and disfigured people to illustrate this. All that remains are ruins, bearing silent witness in the landscape. Ma'loul, just west of Nazareth, is one such ruined village.
20.12. 2023 (19:00) Display
I Signed the Petition (Documentary, 2018, 11m)
Directed by Mahdi Fleifel
A conversation between two friends about the effectiveness and implications of publicly supporting the cultural boycott of Israel. One friend is wracked with worry having signed a petition asking Radiohead not to play Tel Aviv, the other is more sanguine. Their conversation offers a glimpse of what it is to be a Palestinian in today's world.
Frontiers of Dreams and Fears (Documentary, 2001, 56m)
Directed by Mai Masri
Mona and Manar are two Palestinian girls growing up in refugee camps in Beirut and Bethlehem. Despite the overwhelming barriers that separate them, the girls form a close friendship through letters and a dramatic meeting at the Lebanese border. Shot during the liberation of southern Lebanon from Israeli occupation and at the beginning of the Palestinian intifada, Frontiers of Dreams and Fears articulates the feelings, hopes, and growing activism of a generation of young Palestinians living in exile.
4.1. 2025 (19:00) FUCHS2
Wajib (Comedy/Drama, 2017, 1h 36m)
Directed by Annemarie Jacir
Abu Shadi is a divorced father and a school teacher in his mid-60s living in Nazareth. After his daughter’s wedding in one month he will be living alone. Shadi, his architect son, arrives from Rome after years abroad to help his father in hand delivering the wedding invitations to each guest as per local Palestinian custom. As the estranged pair spend the day together, the tense details of their relationship come to a head challenging their fragile and very different lives.
11.1.2024 (19:00) etc. Gallery
Foragers (Documentary, 2022, 1h 05m)
Directed by Jumana Manna
Foragers depicts the dramas around the practice of foraging for wild edible plants in Palestine/Israel with wry humor and a meditative pace. Shot in the Golan Heights, the Galilee and Jerusalem, it employs fiction, documentary and archival footage to portray the impact of Israeli nature protection laws on these customs. The restrictions prohibit the collection of the artichoke-like ’akkoub and za’atar (thyme), and have resulted in fines and trials for hundreds caught collecting these native plants. For Palestinians, these laws constitute an ecological veil for legislation that further alienates them from their land while Israeli state representatives insist on their scientific expertise and duty to protect. Following the plants from the wild to the kitchen, from the chases between the foragers and the nature patrol, to courtroom defenses, Foragers captures the joy and knowledge embodied in these traditions alongside their resilience to the prohibitive law. By reframing the terms and constraints of preservation, the film raises questions around the politics of extinction, namely who determines what is made extinct and what gets to live on.
18.1.2024 - City Surfer Office
A World Not Ours (Documentary, 2012, 1h 33m)
Directed by Mahdi Fleifel
A World Not Ours is an intimate, humorous, portrait of three generations of exile in the refugee camp of Ein el-Helweh, in southern Lebanon. Based on a wealth of personal recordings, family archives, and historical footage, the film is a sensitive, and illuminating study of belonging, friendship, and family.
Filmed over more than 20 years by multiple generations of the same family, A World Not Ours is more than just a family portrait; it is an attempt to record what is being forgotten, and mark what should not be erased from collective memory.
graphic design: SelmeciKockaJusko
curated by: Zaher Jureidini
ENG//
In light of recent and ongoing events in Palestine, we believe there is a strong need for actualizing the solidarity of Prague’s cultural spaces, and doing so collaboratively. KINO PALESTINE is a step toward this goal, specifically toward presenting images of life and resistance in Gaza, the West Bank, and the Palestinian diaspora. As we are daily confronted with victimizing, generalizing, and violent sights and narratives, and amidst ongoing efforts to silence and censor journalists and artists in Palestine and Europe, we hope that this series of screenings might provide a clearer, emboldening vision of Palestine and its people – its history, its present situation, and the freedom in its future. Initiated by Garage Gallery, KINO PALESTINE is a growing, collective effort to amplify Palestinian voices of resistance. Standing in solidarity with all victims of violence, we refuse systemic silencing.
7.12. 2023 (19:00) Academy of Fine Arts in Prague
Tale of the Three Jewels (Drama, 1995, 1h 47m)
Directed by Michel Khleifi
Yussef is a twelve-year old Palestinian child of the First Intifada. With his father in prison and his brother a fugitive from the Israeli army, he lives alone with his mother and sister. Though his life is marked by violence, he lives in his imagination, often escaping from the refugee-camp into the Gaza countryside. While hunting for birds one day, Yussef meets Aida, a young gypsy girl who poses a daunting challenge, leading him into a perilous adventure. This lyrical and moving work was shot in the early months of 1994, while Gaza remained under Israeli military occupation, and was the first feature film ever to be shot entirely in the Gaza Strip.
13.12. 2023 (19:00) Garage Gallery
Ave Maria (Short/Comedy, 2015, 14m)
Directed by Basil Khalil
In this Academy Award–nominated film, a squabbling family of Israeli settlers find themselves in a sticky situation after their car breaks down in a remote area of the West Bank. (Sabbath laws mean they can’t use phones to call for help.) Their only potential saviors? An order of Palestinian nuns—who’ve taken a vow of silence.
Ma’loul Celebrates its Destruction (Documentary, 1984, 30m)
Directed by Michel Khleifi
Since the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948, countless Palestinian villages have been erased from the map. Ma'loul Celebrates Its Destruction uses poignant images of bombardments, destroyed buildings, and disfigured people to illustrate this. All that remains are ruins, bearing silent witness in the landscape. Ma'loul, just west of Nazareth, is one such ruined village.
20.12. 2023 (19:00) Display
I Signed the Petition (Documentary, 2018, 11m)
Directed by Mahdi Fleifel
A conversation between two friends about the effectiveness and implications of publicly supporting the cultural boycott of Israel. One friend is wracked with worry having signed a petition asking Radiohead not to play Tel Aviv, the other is more sanguine. Their conversation offers a glimpse of what it is to be a Palestinian in today's world.
Frontiers of Dreams and Fears (Documentary, 2001, 56m)
Directed by Mai Masri
Mona and Manar are two Palestinian girls growing up in refugee camps in Beirut and Bethlehem. Despite the overwhelming barriers that separate them, the girls form a close friendship through letters and a dramatic meeting at the Lebanese border. Shot during the liberation of southern Lebanon from Israeli occupation and at the beginning of the Palestinian intifada, Frontiers of Dreams and Fears articulates the feelings, hopes, and growing activism of a generation of young Palestinians living in exile.
4.1. 2025 (19:00) FUCHS2
Wajib (Comedy/Drama, 2017, 1h 36m)
Directed by Annemarie Jacir
Abu Shadi is a divorced father and a school teacher in his mid-60s living in Nazareth. After his daughter’s wedding in one month he will be living alone. Shadi, his architect son, arrives from Rome after years abroad to help his father in hand delivering the wedding invitations to each guest as per local Palestinian custom. As the estranged pair spend the day together, the tense details of their relationship come to a head challenging their fragile and very different lives.
11.1.2024 (19:00) etc. Gallery
Foragers (Documentary, 2022, 1h 05m)
Directed by Jumana Manna
Foragers depicts the dramas around the practice of foraging for wild edible plants in Palestine/Israel with wry humor and a meditative pace. Shot in the Golan Heights, the Galilee and Jerusalem, it employs fiction, documentary and archival footage to portray the impact of Israeli nature protection laws on these customs. The restrictions prohibit the collection of the artichoke-like ’akkoub and za’atar (thyme), and have resulted in fines and trials for hundreds caught collecting these native plants. For Palestinians, these laws constitute an ecological veil for legislation that further alienates them from their land while Israeli state representatives insist on their scientific expertise and duty to protect. Following the plants from the wild to the kitchen, from the chases between the foragers and the nature patrol, to courtroom defenses, Foragers captures the joy and knowledge embodied in these traditions alongside their resilience to the prohibitive law. By reframing the terms and constraints of preservation, the film raises questions around the politics of extinction, namely who determines what is made extinct and what gets to live on.
18.1.2024 - City Surfer Office
A World Not Ours (Documentary, 2012, 1h 33m)
Directed by Mahdi Fleifel
A World Not Ours is an intimate, humorous, portrait of three generations of exile in the refugee camp of Ein el-Helweh, in southern Lebanon. Based on a wealth of personal recordings, family archives, and historical footage, the film is a sensitive, and illuminating study of belonging, friendship, and family.
Filmed over more than 20 years by multiple generations of the same family, A World Not Ours is more than just a family portrait; it is an attempt to record what is being forgotten, and mark what should not be erased from collective memory.
graphic design: SelmeciKockaJusko
