This is Palestine
George Azar
An epic voyage through the historic Palestinian heartland, with insightful commentary and more than 500 beautiful photographs by veteran photojournalist George Azar. Travel beyond the headlines, inside Palestine, and see this vibrant land as you've never seen it before. A portion of the proceeds goes to students in the West Bank and Gaza.
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Occupation 101 - Voices of the Silenced Majority NEW! ***HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!***
Sufyan Omeish & Abdallah Omeish, 2007, 90 minutes
A thought-provoking and powerful documentary on the current and historical root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Occupation 101 presents a comprehensive analysis of the facts and hidden truths, and dispels many of the myths and misconceptions. The roots of the conflict are explained through first-hand on-the-ground experiences from leading Middle East scholars, peace activists, journalists, religious leaders and humanitarian workers whose voices have too often been suppressed in mainstream media.
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Our sufferings in this land NEW!
Ed Hill , 2006, 80 minutes
Through interviews with farmers, teachers, activists, and ordinary people, woven together with the story of the trip, this film presents an understanding of Palestine as a case-study which unlocks an understanding of world politics and the hypocrisy of Western politicians and the bias of mainstream media.
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Palestine Is Still The Issue
John Pilger, 2002, 53 minutes
In a series of extraordinary interviews with both Palestinians and Israelis, John Pilger weaves together the issue of Palestine. Pilger continually asks why the Palestinians, whose right of return was affirmed by the United Nations more than half a century ago, are still caught in a terrible limbo -- refugees in their own land, controlled by Israel in the longest military occupation in modern times. Pilger says it is time to bring justice and peace to Palestine.
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Palestine for Beginners
Linda Bevis & Edward Mast, 2004, 72 minutes
Filmed before a live audience and professionally edited, Palestine for Beginners is a presentation by two American human rights activists who have traveled many times to Palestine and explain the situation. The presentation examines the background of the conflict, Zionism, 1948, 1967, the situation today, occupation, equal rights and peace, non-violence and resistance, and the one state vs. two state debate.
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Sucha Normal Thing - A Simple Journey into the Israeli-Occupied West Bank
Rebecca Glotfelty, 2004, 80 minutes
Capturing the voice of individual Palestinians, internationals, and Israeli peace activists, "Sucha Normal Thing" documents untold stories of ordinary people amidst the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In an attempt to deconstruct her preconceived visions, American filmmaker Rebecca Glotfelty travels beyond mainstream news headlines into the heart of the Israeli-occupied West Bank to experience first-hand one of the most pressing conflicts of our time.
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Beyond the Mirage - The Face of the Occupation
David Neuneubel, 2002, 48 minutes
The film discusses some of the major daily realities Palestinians face: roadblocks, destruction of houses, military brutality. Powerful insights are provided by interviews with Jessica Montel, Director of B'Tselem, Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions, and Allegra Pacheco, an Israeli attorney who represents Palestinians in Israeli military court and the Israeli Supreme Court.
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Tragedy in the Holy Land - The Second Uprising
Denis Mueler, 2002, 71 minutes
"Tragedy in the Holy Land: The Second Uprising" covers the origins of the dispute between the people of this region and offers a rare look at the confrontation from a Palestinian point of view, with profound remarks and insight from Palestinians, Jews and other noted scholars. The film addresses the core issues of land and identity, and probes the evolution of the conflict from a historical perspective.
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People and the Land
Tom Hayes, 1997, 57 minutes
"People and the Land" takes viewers into the universe of the occupied people of Palestine, unreeling images of a new form of apartheid based on ethnicity. Challenging US foreign policy, this film examines the concrete realities of Israel's conduct in the West Bank and Gaza, the level of US support for that conduct through foreign aid, and the human cost of that aid in Palestine and the US. The result is a powerful and compelling portrayal of the situation that highlights the human rights violations against the Palestinian community.
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Checkpoint
Tom Wright and Therese Saliba, 1997, 58 minutes
Checkpoint portrays a side of the story little known to American audiences: the devastating effects of the agreement on Palestinian lives. With an engaging style and offbeat humor, the documentary exposes shallow mass-media interpretations of the conflict and reveals the immense imbalance of power between the two sides.
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The Iron Wall ***HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!***
Mohammed Alatar, 2006, 52 minutes
This eye-opening documentary exposes the Israel's colonization policy and follows the timeline, size, population of the "settlements," and their impact on the peace process. This film also touches on the latest project to make the settlements a permanent fact on the ground; the annexation Wall that Israel is building in the West Bank, and its impact on the Palestinian people.
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The Israeli Wall in Palestinian Lands
Andrew Courtney and Emily Perry, 2004, 43 minutes
In this film, Palestinians from different walks of life are asked how the wall affects them. They include a businessman from Abu Dis, a young mother from Dheishe Refugee Camp, a music student from Ramallah, a community center director from Jerusalem, a farmer from northern Qalqilya, the director of the Stop the Wall campaign, and a member of the African-Palestinian community.
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Private
Saverio Costanzo, 2004, 90 minutes
The Israeli army decides to seize a Palestinian family's home, confining them to a few downstairs rooms in daytime and a single room at night. Mohammad refuses to leave this home and, reinforced by his principles against violence, decides to find a way to keep his family together in the house until the Israeli soldiers move on.

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Paradise Now
Hany Abu-Assad, 2005, 90 minutes
“PARADISE NOW” is the story of two young Palestinian men as they embark upon what may be the last 48 hours of their lives. On a typical day in the West Bank city of Nablus, where daily life grinds on amidst crushing poverty and the occasional rocket blast, we meet two childhood best friends who are selected to do a suicide bombing.

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Rana's Wedding
Hany Abu-Assad, 2002, 90 minutes
Shooting on location in East Jerusalem, Ramallah and at checkpoints in-between, Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad (Ford Transit) sees the Palestinian-Israeli conflict through the eyes of a young woman who, with only ten hours to marry, must negotiate her way around roadblocks, soldiers, stonethrowers, overworked officials ... and into the heart of an elusive lover.

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Divine Intervention
Elia Suleiman, 2002, 92 minutes
In this darkly comic masterpiece, Palestinian director Elia Suleiman utilizes irreverence, wit, mysticism and insight to craft an intense, hallucinogenic and extremely adept exploration of the dreams and nightmares of Palestinians and Israelis living in uncertain times.
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like twenty impossibles
Annemarie Jacir, 2004, 17 minutes
Occupied Palestine: A serene landscape now pockmarked by military checkpoints. When a Palestinian film crew averts a closed checkpoint by taking a remote side road, the political landscape unravels, and the passengers are slowly taken apart by the mundane brutality of military occupation. Both a visual poem and a narrative, like twenty impossibles wryly questions artistic responsibility and the politics of filmmaking, while speaking to the fragmentation of a people.
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Tale of the Three Jewels
Michel Khleifi, 1995, 107 minutes
This feature film tells the story of Yussef, a twelve-year-old boy who lives in an imaginary world of his own and often escapes from the surrounding violence to the beautiful Gaza countryside. One day he meets a ravishing gypsy girl with whom he falls in love. When Yussef declares his intention of marrying her when they grow up, she tells him that he must first find three jewels missing from her grandmother’s necklace, which was brought from South America by her grandfather.
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The Dupes
Tawfik Saleh, 1972, 107 minutes
This black and white film traces the destinies of three Palestinian refugees brought together by dispossession, despair and hope for a better future. The setting is Iraq in the 1950's and the protagonists, concealed in the steel tank of a truck, are trying to make their way across the border into Kuwait, the "promised land." A masterful adaptation of Ghassan Kanafani's acclaimed novella, Men Under the Sun, The Dupes is also one of the first Arab films to address the Palestinian predicament.
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Stranger in My Home - Jerusalem NEW!
Sahera Dirbas, 2007, 37 minutes
The film relates the stories of eight Palestinian Jerusalemite families that have been turned refugees in their own city. They recall the events that occurred in the Moghrabi Quarter of Jerusalem during the 1967 war. Each family goes to see its house which was occupied in 1948, some entering their former homes and having a discussion with the current Israeli tenants.
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Arna's Children
Juliano Mer Khamis, 2003, 84 minutes
Five years after his mother's death, Juliano Mer Khamis returns to the Jenin refugee camp to discover what happened to the children's theater group she founded. Shifting back and forth in time, Mer Khamis's film juxtaposes the sweet-faced young boys with the militants and martyrs they become. "Arna's Children" reveals the tragedy and horror of young lives trapped by the circumstances of occupation.
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Gaza Strip
James Longley, 2002, 74 minutes
Gaza Strip follows a range of people and events following the election of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, including the first major armed incursion into "Area A" by IDF forces during this intifada. The film is filmed almost entirely in a verite style, presented without narration and with little explanation, focusing on ordinary Palestinians rather than politicians and pundits. More observation than political argument, Gaza Strip offers a rare look inside the stark realities of Palestinian life and death under Israeli military occupation.
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Gaza Ghetto - Portrait of a Palestinian Family (also covers refugee issues)
PeA Holmquist, Joan Mandell, Pierre Bjorklund, 1984, 82 minutes
Even as the political status of Gaza and the West Bank evolve, the uncertainties and harshness of land confiscations and military occupation remain key. Produced in 1984, this classic explores the very issues that caused the intifada and continue to this very day. Moments of tragedy and joy are intercut with scenes of Israeli politicians, soldiers. Abu El-Adel's grandchildren listen intently to their heritage, anticipating their future from their past.
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Gaza Under Siege
Gazans bear the brunt of Israel's determination to quash the uprising. The film focuses on one refugee family trying to cope. Already poor, the family has reached breaking point, and wonders how long life can go on with no solution in sight. Raji Sourani, a human rights lawyer, asks why the international commmunity shies away from its responsibilities and fails to criticize Israel's aggression and the denial of the Palestinians' rights.
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Jenin Jenin (also covers refugee issues)
Mohamed Bakri, 2002, 54 minutes
Filmed shortly following Israel's April 2002 attack on the Jenin refugee camp, this documentary includes testimony from the survivors of the camp. A large section of the camp was flattened and scores of Palestinians were killed. Numerous cases of war crimes have been documented by Palestinians as well as international human rights groups. "Jenin Jenin" shows the extent to which the prolonged oppression and terror has affected the state of mind of the Palestinian inhabitants of Jenin.
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Jerusalem: An Occupation Set in Stone?
Marty Rosenbluth, 1995, 55 minutes
Filmmaker Marty Rosenbluth details the devastating effects of Israel's urban planning policies that, according to many, aim to uproot the Palestinian presence in the Holy City. The documentary is a tribute to the thousands of Palestinians living in East Jerusalem without access to life's most basic amenities.
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Jerusalem 1948: Youm Ilak ou Youm Aleik
Leon Willems and Tinus Kramer, 1998, 45 minutes
The film aims, on the one hand, to explain the historical complexity of the Palestinian Nakba in 1948 while also providing insight into the diversity of Palestinian refugee experiences since then. Palestinian eyewitnesses and experts, now refugees living in refugee camps, villages and cities in Palestine, Jordan and the USA tell the story of their lives in pre-1948 Jerusalem.
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Also see:
Rana's Wedding (under "Feature Films")
Tale of the Three Jewels (under "Feature Films")

Frontiers of Dreams and Fears (also covers refugee issues)
Mai Masri, 2002, 53 minutes
Shot during the liberation of South Lebanon and the beginning of the Al Aqsa Intifada, "Frontiers of Dreams and Fears" accompanies two young girls on an extraordinary journey to the borders of exile, which separate them from each other and from their homeland.
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Children of Shatila (also covers refugee issues)
Mai Masri, 2002, 53 minutes
With a focus on the lives of children in the Shatila refugee camp on the outskirts of Beirut, this documentary examines the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, life in the refugee camps, and the lasting effects of war.
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Children of Fire
Mai Masri, 1990, 50 minutes
When filmmaker Mai Masri returned to her hometown of Nablus after a fourteen year absence, she discovered a new generation of Palestinian fighters: the children of the Intifada. "Children of Fire" captures their courageous story on film and paints a daring portrait of the Palestinian uprising.
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The Children of Ibdaa - To Create Something Out of Nothing
S. Smith Patrick, 2002, 29 minutes
This documentary shows how members of the dance troupe from Dheisheh refugee camp use their performance to express the history, struggle, and aspirations of the Palestinian people, specifically the fight to return to their homeland. The film offers insight into their families’ displacement from their villages, the physically and emotionally stressful aspects of life in a refugee camp, and the unique experience of participating in the politically motivated dance troupe.
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Also see:
Tale of the Three Jewels (under "Feature Films")
Gaza Strip (under "Gaza, Jenin, Jerusalem")
Jenin Jenin (under "Gaza, Jenin, Jerusalem")

until when...
Dahna Abourahme, 2004, 76 min
Set during the current Intifada, this documentary follows four Palestinian families living in Dheisheh Refugee Camp near Bethlehem. They talk about their past and discuss the future with humor, sorrow, frustration and hope. "until when..." paints an intimate in-depth portrait of Palestinian lives today.

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Waiting To Go
Di Tatham, 2001, 27 minutes
This program from the City Life series is set in Lebanon, where (according to the UN) there are three hundred seventy-five thousand Palestinian refugees. Palestinians are unwanted in Israel, but in war-torn, sectarian Lebanon, among fellow Arabs, they hardly fare better, and most live in poverty. Barred from working, they also have limited access to medical care and higher education. Many have been in Lebanon for over fifty years.
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500 Dunam on the Moon
Rachel Leah Jones, 2002, 48 minutes
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.
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Also see:
Gaza Ghetto - Portrait of a Palestinian Family (under "Gaza, Jenin, Jerusalem")
Jenin Jenin (under "Gaza, Jenin, Jerusalem")
Frontiers of Dreams and Fears (under "Children")
Children of Shatila (under "Children")

A Caged Bird's Song
Sobhi Zobaidi, 2003, 30 minutes
Almost one third of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are school and university students. Under Israeli occupation Palestinian education has been a constant struggle rather than a basic right. This film examines the more recent history of that struggle during Israel's current war of attrition on the civilian population under its control.
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In The Name of Security
Emily Kunstler and Sarah Kunstler, 2002, 27 minutes
In May of 2002, a delegation from the National Lawyers Guild traveled throughout the West Bank to investigate allegations of war crimes by the Israeli military. What the delegation found was a state-sponsored campaign aimed at destroying the identity and culture of the Palestinian people. This film documents what they saw. Through interviews and documentation of destroyed cities and impassable checkpoints, the video describes a brutal occupation designed to prevent statehood.
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Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land
Bathsheba Ratzkoff & Sut Jhally, 2003, 80 minutes
This pivotal video exposes how the foreign policy interests of American political elites--working in combination with Israeli public relations strategies--exercise a powerful influence over 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 an examination of factors that have distorted U.S. media coverage and, in turn, American public opinion.
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TV's Promised Land
Nicholas Dembowski, 2003, 75 minutes
A clever montage of found footage from Hollywood movies, cable news networks, European news broadcasts, American Westerns, etc. The accumulated evidence powerfully asserts that Western media has long demonized a catch-all "Arab/Muslim world" via selective coverage and dehumanizing imagery that boosts the "good vs. evil" rhetoric of politicians and pundits.
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Naji Al-Ali, An Artist with Vision
Kasim Abid, 1999
Interviews with leading Arab journalists and poets, former jail mates, his wife and others give us insight to his unrelenting commitment to his people, and into his subtly satirical cartoons that stirred the hearts of millions of refugees. This film examines the forces that shaped Naji as an artist, as a human being, and shows how his experiences mirror those of other exiled Palestinians.
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Rachel - An American Conscience
Yahya Barakat, 2005
This documentary offers rare footage of Rachel talking to a camera and describing Israeli human rights violations against a Palestinian civilian population. The film opens with grim images of dinasaur-like Caterpillar bulldozers turning urban Rafah into a garbage pile of destroyed buildings. It continues with interviews of Rachel's fellow International Solidarity Movement volunteers, and concludes with comments from her parents.
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The Killing Zone
Sandra Jordan, 2003, 50 minutes
In addition to the murder of Rachel Corrie, this film documents the shooting by Israeli troops of the British peace campaigner Tom Hurndall, the death of James Miller, the award-winning cameraman who worked extensively for Channel 4, killed as he filmed Israeli troops bulldozing Palestinian homes, and the deaths and mutilation of many innocent Palestinians and Israelis.
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A Portrait of Edward Said
Emmanuel Hamon, 2002, 54 minutes
This intimate documentary offers a glimpse at some of Edward Said's final reflections on the themes that dominated his life's work. Known as one of America's great contemporary intellectuals and a prominent spokesperson for the Palestinian cause in the United States, Said died in September of 2003 at the age of 67. Shortly before his death, a French film crew spent several weeks with him and his family.
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Mahmoud Darwich: As the Land Is the Language
Simone Bitton, 1997, 60 minutes
This film, which follows Darwich from the Cisjordanian desert to Paris via Cairo and Beirut, tracing the path of his exile from Israel, sets out to understand this popular fervor and share the emotion distilled by Darwich’s words and inimitable rhythm. It not only allows the viewer to appreciate his work in its totality, but also places it in a political, historical and cultural context.
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Hanan Ashrawi: A Woman of Her Time
Mai Masri, 1995, 50 minutes
In this very personal portrait, Palestinian filmmaker Mai Masri profiles Hanan Ashrawi, exploring how she manages to juggle her responsibilities as political activist, writer and mother - against the backdrop of challenges facing the Palestinians in the struggle to build a viable state.
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