Most of us lead ordinary lives in which we give from granted practically everything, from having a walk in a park and sitting in a café with friends to going to a gig or to the cinema.
Yet there are many people who aren’t as lucky as us and who, for different reasons, may not have access to what some of us simply consider as everyday basic "needs".
Think for example about going to the movies: if you’re a film fan or if you go to the cinema at least once a week, it would be inconceivable to live in a place where there is no movie theatre. Yet the people in Jenin, in the West Bank, lived without a movie theatre since 1987.
Cinema Jenin had 500 red seats and it was considered as the largest movie theatre in the Palestinian territories, offering three shows a day. When the First Intifada broke out in 1987, the cinema closed down, becoming a dump.
The movie theatre was finally reopened last week after a $1m restoration led by a German project that lasted two years and that also involved German director Markus Vetter.
Teams of Palestinian and international volunteers also granted further help by restoring the chairs, painting the walls and repairing the electrical system.
With over 300 seats, an open-air screen, solar panels on the roof (since energy interruptions are common in this area), a sound system donated by Pink Floyd's Roger Waters, a 3D projection system, a digital library and a café, Cinema Jenin promises to become in future a place where to meet and watch films, but also a safe haven for culture and a creative space for the local inhabitants and the refugee camp.
Cinema Jenin reopened with a three-day film festival that included in its programme screenings of Heart of Jenin (2008) by Marcus Vetter, To Shoot an Elephant, an eyewitness account from the Gaza Strip by Alberto Arce and Mohammad Rujeilah, and Egyptian movie Hassan & Marcus (2008) by Rami Imam starring Omar Sharif. It is in many ways symbolical that Heart of Jenin was screened in celebration of the cinema reopening.
The award-winning documentary focuses on the story of Ahmed Khatib, a 12-year-old boy shot dead in 2005 by an Israeli soldier who mistook the child’s toy gun for a real one. Ahmed’s parents decided to donate their son’s organs to Israeli children, as a symbol of peace.
Heart of Jenin features interviews with the families of those kids who received Ahmed’s organs and, even though it’s a documentary, Vetter’s work makes me think a lot about Italian Neorealism.
After the Second World War, film production studios didn’t exist anymore in Italy and there weren’t any funds for films, so Italian directors moved to the streets and started shooting movies casting as actors ordinary people, creating in this way an entirely new genre, Neorealism.
While Cinema Jenin will show films from different genres, including American action movies, documentaries, children’s films, Egyptian comedies and Bollywood films, the people involved in re-launching the movie theatre hope that it will also become a symbol, the location for a first international film festival in Palestine and, hopefully, the head quarter of a film school.
I’m sure that one day we will see Cinema Jenin being twinned with other cinemas or international film festivals, yet for the time being I would like to see actors or directors donating film equipment to young people in Jenin and inspire them to go out with a video camera and tell their own stories through words and images.
I do feel that a Palestinian Neorelism is indeed possible and, while not all the children who may be involved in such projects, will end up working in the film industry one day, I'd like to think that at least one of them - like Totò in Giuseppe Tornatore’s Nuovo Cinema Paradiso - will become a famous director.
Obviously this is not going to be easy: first it will be difficult to make sure the cinema offers an engaging, intriguing and relevant programme for the local people, but we must consider that there are still quite a few tensions to iron out.
Economy may be developing in these areas and people are hoping to achieve better life standards, but there is still a rather controversial situation when it comes to politics and the occupied territories.
Yet the Greek used to believe in the cathartic power of tragedies and cinema has a huge cathartic power as well, and I’m confident that one day we will see not only directors, but also actors, directors of photography, costume designers and producers hailing from Jenin.
In the meantime we can all give a hand: the cinema is indeed on the lookout for volunteers, contributors and investors. There are different ways to offer support to Cinema Jenin, from helping with a donation to sponsoring a seat or becoming an ambassador (check out this link to read more about the kind of support the cinema needs at the moment), so there are no excuses not to get involved and contribute in this way to give life to an entirely new film industry from Palestine.


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