Friday, January 29th
Opening Night Reception 5pm
Screenings 6pm to 10.45pm
Doors Open at 5pm
PROGRAM A:
Mothers, Daughters, & Sons in War (232 minutes)
6:00pm ... To Die in Jerusalem
2007 / 76 minutes
Two daughters lost in conflict: one a suicide bomber, the other her victim. Two mothers searching for answers. Two nations divided by the land they share. ‘To Die in Jerusalem’ looks at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the eyes of two mothers who lost their daughters in one deadly act of violence in a Jerusalem market in 2002. The cover of Newsweek spoke volumes: side-by-side pictures of Ayat al-Akhras, the 18-year-old Palestinian suicide bomber and her victim, 17-year-old Israeli student Rachel Levy, so alike they could have been sisters.
The film explores—through the two families’ personal losses and Avigail Levy’s search for answers—the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, mutual pain despite cultural differences and diverse perceptions of death; and ultimately, the hope for peace. The film’s most revealing moment is in an emotionally-charged meeting between the mothers of the two dead girls.
7:15pm ... Intermission, 30 min
7:45pm ... Motherland Afghanistan
2007 / 74 minutes
Afghani-American filmmaker Sedika Mojadidi shadows her father, a women's health specialist working to rebuild hospitals in war-torn Afghanistan, in this thought-provoking documentary filmed in the wake of the United States' invasion of the region. In a country where one in seven women dies during childbirth, many women are willing to travel for days to receive adequate care from a trained professional.
9:00pm ... Intermission, 20 min
9:20pm ... This is War—Memories of Iraq
2007 / 82 minutes
Employing photographs and footage shot primarily by the soldiers themselves, the film takes viewers to Fallujah, Najaf, and the perilous bomb-infested roads outside of Baghdad as well as inside the heads of the combatants to reveal the tight bonds that emerge from the action.