Submitted by THE WOOD COUNTY GREEN PARTY & THE MEDIA DECOMPRESSION COLLECTIVE OF TOLEDO
The Wood County Green Party is bringing two films to Bowling Green as part of the Toledo Palestine Film Festival.
The first film “Five Broken Cameras” will be shown Monday, March 25 from 6:30-8:30 p.m.
The second film, “Salt of this Sea,” will be screened Saturday, April 6 at 1 p.m.
Both will be shown at the Woodland Mall, 1234 N Main St
In addition, “The Occupation of the American Mind” will be screened Tuesday, April 2 at 5:30 p.m. at the Way Library.
The Toledo Palestine Film Festival began today (March 19) with a screening of “Tantura” at the King Road Branch Library (3900 King Rd, Toledo and continues with screenings of more than 20 films through April 13 in venues throughout Northwest Ohio.
The festival is organized by Amjad Damouni of the Media Decompression Collective of Toledo.
Click to view the complete schedule.
Joseph DeMare, Co-Chair of the Wood County Green Party says, “In the midst of the latest war between Isreal and Palestine, it is vital that we Americans understand the roots of this conflict. The terrible attacks last October were not the beginning of this conflict. One of the Green Party principles is Non-Violence. It’s clear that violence will not be the solution to the current crisis. Non-Violence requires an understanding of both sides of the conflict in order to find solutions both sides can live with. That’s why we are bringing these films, so that people can get an idea of what is happening to the Palestinean people. Hopefully that will lead to solutions that can stop the killing.”
The MDC website provides the following descriptions of the films:
“Five Broken Cameras” is first-hand account of non-violent resistance in Bil’in, a West Bank village threatened by encroaching Israeli settlements. Shot almost entirely by Palestinian farmer Emad Burnat, who bought his first camera in 2005 to record the birth of his youngest son, the footage was later given to Israeli co-director Guy Davidi to edit. Structured around the violent destruction of each one of Burnat’s cameras, the filmmakers’ collaboration follows one family’s evolution over five years of village turmoil. Burnat watches from behind the lens as olive trees are bulldozed, protests intensify, and lives are lost. “I feel like the camera protects me,” he says, “but it’s an illusion.”
“The Occupation of the American Mind” is a 2016 American documentary film directed by Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp, and narrated by Roger Waters. According to Al Jazeera, the film seeks to show how information warfare waged by Israel and its supporters distorted the truth about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and won over the hearts and minds of Americans for the last 50 years. In other words, The Occupation of the American Mind seeks to explore the United States’ steadfast support for Israel in the face of the latter’s controversial actions.
Annemarie Jacir’s politically charged feature debut, “Salt of this Sea,” s the story of Soraya, a Brooklyn-born woman who travels to Palestine to retrieve her grandfather’s savings, frozen in a Jaffa bank account after his 1948 exile. Her status as a dispossessed exile and encounter with contemporary politics provides a rare glimpse into the Middle East of today.
