[van-announce] Fri Feb 21: Film GAZA STRIP @ videoin

[emily_aspinwall]

   Canpalnet    Canada - Palestine Support Network
Presents  a screening of James Longley's video documentary
		
		GAZA STRIP
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   this Friday   February 21    7:30pm
   Video In Studios
   1965 Main St (at 3rd) vancouver, bc
   admission by donation
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Documentary Synopsis
   
 "Gaza Strip" pushes the viewer headlong
   into the tumult of the Israeli-occupied Gaza, examining the
   lives and views of ordinary Palestinians.
   The documentary often sees the world through the eyes of
   young people. The central character is Mohammed Hejazi, a
   13-year-old paperboy in Gaza City, one of the young
   "stone-throwers" who risk their lives throwing rocks at
   Israeli tanks across the barbwire fences. As the newspapers
   arrive announcing Ariel Sharon's victory in the Israeli
   elections, Mohammed offers up tirades against Arafat and
   Sharon alike. We also catch glimpses of his inner world: his
   sense of hopelessness, his sorrow at the IDF killing of his
   best friend, his conception of death. As the camera floats
   through the Gaza Strip, we encounter signs of the occupation
   everywhere: crowds of Palestinians are making their way
   along the beach on foot, donkey carts and tractor trailers
   when the Israeli soldiers close the roads. The Palestinians
   interviewed as they pass by reveal a common internal
   conflict, between anger at the Israeli occupation and the
   desire to live in peace.
   In the Khan Younis refugee camp, "Gaza Strip" documents an
   extremely controversial incident in February, which fell
   largely through the cracks of international scrutiny, when
   the Israeli Defense Forces used an unidentified, powerful
   gas during a firefight, hospitalizing over 200 Palestinians
   with severe recurrent convulsions.
   Inside a Red Cross tent near an Israeli checkpoint, a
   Palestinian mother and daughter debate the politics of their
   situation. As night falls on their camp, the mother
   describes how Israeli soldiers came with bulldozers, leveled
   their home and destroyed all of their belongings.
   The eye of the film is usually passive and watchful,
   sometimes almost invisible, even in the most intimate
   settings. When a Palestinian child is blown up in Rafah, we
   see the entire process of his internment, from morgue to
   mosque to grave, unblinkingly. The camera moves slowly over
   a Palestinian neighborhood being strafed by Israeli
   machine-gun fire, schoolchildren scattering.
   "Gaza Strip" culminates in a nighttime raid in April, when
   Israeli bulldozers stormed into the Khan Younis refugee camp
   under the cover of tank and helicopter fire, and destroyed
   the homes of 450 Palestinians - the first of many such armed
   incursions into "Area A" by the IDF.

   Director: James Longley James Longley was born in Oregon
   in 1972 and received a film education at the University of
   Rochester and Wesleyan University in the United States, and
   the Russian Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in Moscow.
   James received the Student Academy Award from the Academy of
   Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his short documentary,
   "Portrait of Boy with Dog," about a boy in a Moscow
   orphanage. "Gaza Strip," his first feature documentary, was
   produced on location during the spring of 2001.

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