Films for understanding Palestine

The voice of a new generation rocks and rhymes as Palestinian rappers form alternative voices of resistance within the Israeli-Palestinian struggle.

Separated by a checkpoint, Palestinian lovers from Jerusalem and Ramallah arrange clandestine meetings.

Documentary about the 2002 deadly confrontations between armed Israeli soldiers and Palestinians in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin.

Juliano Mer Khamis' documentary on his mother, Arna, an activist against the Israeli occupation who founded an alternative education system for Palestinian children.

A romantic drama about a working-class woman and her experiences traveling back home.

A 14-year-old girl in 1948 Palestine watches from a locked pantry as catastrophe consumes her home.

In this award-winning documentary, the first time directors take a detailed looks at the apartheid analogy commonly used to describe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A documentary on a Palestinian farmer's chronicle of his nonviolent resistance to the actions of the Israeli army.

Documentary about a team of men who are united by the desire to represent their people by playing for the Palestinian National Football team. They are modern day heroes in a land that badly needs them.

A thought-provoking and powerful documentary film on the current and historical root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and U.S. political involvement.

This video shows how the foreign policy interests of American political elites-working in combination with Israeli public relations stratgies-influence US news reporting about the Middle East conflict. Combining American and British TV news clips with observations of analysts, journalists and political activists, Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land provides a brief historical overview, a striking media comparison, and an examination of factors that have distorted U.S. media coverage and, in turn, American public opinion.

A small Palestinian village bought 18 cows and stopped buying Israeli milk.

Israel's ongoing military occupation of Palestinian territory and repeated invasions of the Gaza strip have triggered a fierce backlash against Israeli policies virtually everywhere in the world - except the United States. The Occupation of the American Mind takes an eye-opening look at this critical exception, zeroing in on pro-Israel public relations efforts within the U.S. Narrated by Roger Waters and featuring leading observers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and U.S. media culture, the film explores how the Israeli government, the U.S. government, and the pro-Israel lobby have joined forces, often with very different motives, to shape American media coverage of the conflict in Israel's favor. From the U.S.-based public relations campaigns that emerged in the 1980s to today, the film provides a sweeping analysis of Israel's decades-long battle for the hearts, minds, and tax dollars of the American people in the face of widening international condemnation of its increasingly right-wing policies. Featuring Amira Hass, M.J. Rosenberg, Stephen M. Walt, Noam Chomsky, Rula Jebreal, Henry Siegman, Rashid Khalidi, Rami Khouri, Yousef Munayyer, Norman Finkelstein, Max Blumenthal, Phyllis Bennis, Norman Solomon, Mark Crispin Miller, Peter Hart and Sut Jhally.

Some Palestinians who were held in an Israeli detention center are assembled to re-enact their experience in an effort to heal.

An examination of the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 through to the present day.

About a Palestinian girl of 17 who wants to get married to the man of her own choosing. Rana wakes up one morning to an ultimatum delivered by her father: she must either choose a husband from a preselected list of men, or she must leave Palestine for Egypt with her father by 4:00 that afternoon. With ten hours to find her boyfriend in occupied Jerusalem, she sneaks out of her father's house at daybreak to find her forbidden love Khalil (Natour).

1967. The world is alive with change: brimming with reawakened energy, new styles, music and an infectious sense of hope. In Jordan, a different kind of change is underway as tens of thousands of refugees pour across the border from Palestine. Having been separated from his father in the chaos of war, Tarek, 11, and his mother Ghaydaa, are amongst this latest wave of refugees. Placed in "temporary" refugee camps made up of tents and prefab houses until they would be able to return, they wait, like the generation before them who arrived in 1948. With difficulties adjusting to life in Harir camp and a longing to be reunited with his father, Tarek searches a way out, and discovers a new hope emerging with the times. Eventually his free spirit and curious nature lead him to a group of people on a journey that will change their lives. When I Saw You is the story of people affected by the times around them, in search of something more in their lives. A journey full of adventure, love, humor, and the desire to be free. A story of the human spirit that knows no borders.

A Palestinian family is trapped inside a house commandeered by Israeli soldiers.

Ayn Hawd is a Palestinian village that was captured and depopulated by Israeli forces in the 1948 war. In 1953 Marcel Janco, a Romanian painter and a founder of the Dada movement, helped transform the village into a Jewish artists' colony, and renamed it Ein Hod. This documentary tells the story of the village's original inhabitants, who, after expulsion, settled only 1.5 kilometers away in the outlying hills. This new Ayn Hawd cannot be found on official maps, as Israeli law doesn't recognize it, and its residents, deemed "present absentees" by the authorities, do not receive basic services such as water, electricity or an access road. Rachel Leah Jones' filmmaking debut is a critical look at the art of dispossession and the creativity of the dispossessed.

A father and his estranged son must come together to hand deliver his daughter's wedding invitations to each guest as per local Palestinian custom, in this rousing family drama from Annemarie Jacir (When I Saw You).

Filmmaker Elia Suleiman travels to different cities and finds unexpected parallels to his homeland of Palestine.

My Tree follows Jason Sherman's journey to find the tree that was planted in his name in Israel many years earlier. When he discovers that it stands on the remains of a Palestinian village that was destroyed in 1967, he embarks on another journey -- to determine his responsibility in helping to cover up the destruction.

In the war of 1948 hundreds of Palestinian villages were depopulated. Israelis call it 'The War of Independence. Palestinians call it 'Nakba"'. The film examines one village- Tantura and why "Nakba" is taboo in Israeli society.

When two young American Jews raised to unconditionally love Israel witness the way Israel treats Palestinians, their lives take sharp left turns. Their stories reveal a deepening generational divide over modern Jewish identity.

"Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of the colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change. Each time a person stands up for an idea, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, (s)he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."-- Robert F. Kennedy These are the moral voices of bravery and justice inside JEWS STEP FORWARD.