Saturday Mezze: Oscar-Winning "No Other Land" / Seacoast New Hampshire Presentation
Mezze - المزة - a wide selection of small dishes served as appetizers, including such delicacies as hummus, cheese, eggplant, brains, stuffed grape leaves, calamari, and much more
Family, Friends, Colleagues, and Fellow Resisters,
I have seen No Other Land, an extraordinarily courageous and provocative Academy Award-winning movie chosen just weeks ago as Best Documentary Feature at the 97th Academy Awards. It had a short run in Epping NH and I took an afternoon off to watch it.
In spite of its compelling narrative, international and domestic awards, and critical acclaim - and Oscars - it has yet to acquire a national distributor, so one has to make an effort to see it.
And see it you must.
This coming week I will even be seeing it again - with friends and loved ones - on April 23rd in Portsmouth NH at 3S Artspace (trailer below), followed by a moderated conversation.
That show is sold out - but read on, another showing - and conversation - has been arranged for Friday, April 25th!
No Other Land is a stark and unflinching account of life - over a timespan of 5 years - in Masafer Yatta, a Palestinian cluster of villages in the Israeli-Occupied West Bank. Produced and directed by a collective of Palestinian and Israeli film-makers and journalists – Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor – No Other Land, which had won best documentary at the Berlin [Germany] film festival before competing in Hollywood, examines the struggle of a community to stay on ancestral lands farmed by generations of their families in spite of predation, terror and violence inflicted upon them by illegal settlers, abetted by Israeli police and military force.
I believe, as Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk wrote in My Name is Red, that "True art comes from a place of darkness, where fear and doubt reside. Only through embracing our darkness can we create something truly extraordinary."
No Other Land is true art. There are few lands and peoples more dark these days than in Palestine and this film cracks their darkness with the light and beauty of truth.
It is something truly extraordinary.
Embrace the film. Embrace the vision and courage of its Oscar-winning creators, one of whom - Hamdan Ballal - was brutally beaten by Israeli settlers living illegally on the West Bank, presumably for being so uppity that he thought he could speak truth to power.
The film speaks truth to power.
The film is being presented by Not In My Name (NIMN), an organization of NH Jews committed to an immediate ceasefire and peace in Israel/Palestine, in partnership with 3S Artspace, 319 Vaughan Street, Portsmouth NH.
That screening - for which some seats remain available - will be on Friday, April 25th at 3S Artspace. The event begins at 6:30pm.
Tickets may be purchased for No Other Land here: No Other Land tickets
Also scheduled - for the following week - is a viewing of There is Another Way - "a story of a group of visionaries who refuse to surrender to violence and injustice, and in doing so show that another path is possible - for them, for us, and for all humanity."
That screening will be Wednesday, April 30th, also at 3S Artspace.
Tickets may be purchased for There is Another Way here: There is Another Way Tickets
"These films are being presented with the support of a community of sponsors! A special thanks to Karin and Steve Barndollar along with NH Peace Action, The Palestine Education Network, NH Veterans for Peace, the UCC Peace with Justice Advocates, American Friends Service Committee and NH/VT Jewish Voice for Peace."
Stay Strong.
Resist.
Salamaat.
Robert
No Other Land ran for a week at the Latchis Theater in Brattleboro VT to packed houses.
Remarkably, No Other Land has already been shown at the Strand Theatre in little Rockland, Maine, where I saw it. And you're right, it is devastating and commanding and terribly moving. I wish more independent theaters had the intelligence to present it.