Last Wednesday Benjamin Netanyahu was reelected as Israel’s prime minister, set to serve an unprecedented fifth term. Leading up to his victory, Netanyahu promised to annex Israeli settlements in the West Bank, diminishing hope even further for the future of a Palestinian state. Our country’s mainstream news media—which, like many of those in power, favor an Israeli perspective—play down Netanyahu’s transgressions, thus depriving many Americans the chance to see their impact on the Palestinian people. When viewed in total, the eight features and ten short films in the 18th annual Chicago Palestine Film Festival provide a necessary framework for understanding dire recent events. The selections comprise an exhaustive, and often emotionally exhausting, look at Palestinian life, both historical and contemporary.
Three of the documentaries center around Palestinian women to joyous and heartbreaking effect. Thomas A. Morgan’s Soufra follows Mariam Shaar, a Palestinian woman born and raised in Beirut’s Burj El Barajneh refugee camp, as she rallies other women in the camp to start a catering business that soon evolves into other, larger endeavors. The footage of the food is positively mouthwatering, a salient reminder of its ability to unite people within a culture as well as outside it. The group, called Soufra, put out a cookbook, with proceeds benefiting its ongoing efforts.
Accompanying all the features is a bevy of short films whose genres range the gamut. It’s in the shorts where narrative fiction dominates, with an emphasis on the day-to-day happenings that make life as a Palestinian seem both wonderful and challenging. Here, too, works centering on women stand out. Laila Abbas’s The Chair is impressive in all respects, from its pacing to its wry economy, as it depicts a Palestinian family in the wake of a family death, with a friend attempting to play matchmaker to both the young Jamaica-based niece and her never-married aunt. Something that links many of the short films is the way in which their makers draw emotions other than horror out of otherwise-appalling scenarios. Take, for instance, Rakan Mayas’s Bonboné, a film that could legitimately be termed sexy even if its plot deals with a Palestinian husband, who has been imprisoned by the Israelis for unknown reasons, and wife trying to conceive across prison bars.
4/20-5/2: dates and times vary, see website; Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, 312-846-2800, palestinefilmfest.com, $12.
