Save the Date, March 5, A WORLD NOT OURS Film Screening in Berkeley
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Our MECA 2014 season is underway! Don’t miss the extraordinary award-winning film about life in a Lebanese refugee camp, A World Not Ours, coming up March 5 at Berkeley City College. Then in April, Ali Abunimah is back with his new book – see info below!
Coming Wednesday, March 5, at 7pm:
A World Not Ours
Berkeley City College
2050 Center Street
near downtown Berkeley Bart
$10, students $5
Benefit for the Middle East Children's Alliance, 510-548-0542, meca@mecaforpeace.org
Tickets available soon!
A dazzling act of first-person filmmaking, Mahdi Fleifel's A WORLD NOT OURS immerses us in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain el-Helweh (‘Sweet Spring’) in Lebanon. Hastily built in 1948, it now houses 70,000 refugees in one square kilometre. Fleifel spent his formative years in the camp in the 1980s before his family settled in Denmark, and for years he has been returning and keeping a video diary. His conversations with the camp residents offer an unfiltered take on life in Ain el-Helweh and the inhabitants’ grievances with Lebanon, Israel and their own political leaders.
At the heart of the film is Fleifel's relationship with his friend Abu Eyad, with whom he shares an obsession with World Cup football and Palestinian politics. But while Fleifel can visit the camp when he pleases, Abu Eyad must remain — an inequity that makes their friendship both extra precious and sometimes tense. Abu Eyad is Fleifel's access-point to parts of the camp that few outsiders could ever hope to visit, and emerges as one of the most vivid and fascinating personalities on view, along with Fleifel's crusty octogenarian grandfather and his live-wire uncle.
Filmed over more than 20 years by multiple generations of the same family, this film is more than just a family portrait; it is a sensitive and illumination study of belonging, friendship, and family -- an attempt to record what is being forgotten, and mark what should not be erased from collective memory. Fleifel succeeds in telling an uplifting and truly funny film about hope in a hopeless world. Lebanon / United Kingdom / Denmark 2012, 93 min
*Grand Jury Special Mention Award, One World International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, Prague, 2013
*Best World Cinema, Documentary Edge Festival 2013
*Best Documentary prize at Abu Dhabi Film Festival, 2012
*Official Selection, Toronto International Film Festival 2012
"A daring and effective effort to humanize those perpetual combatants." -John Anderson, Variety
"Fresh, engaging and accessible" --the Hollywood Reporter
Save The Date! Tuesday, April 22
Join us for Ali Abunimah's Book
Release in Berkeley!
 Ali Abunimah's new book, The Battle for Justice in Palestine, begins: "The Palestinians are winning"...This book is an effective strategy for moving forward in the struggle for justice and a single-state solution in Palestine.
"The best book on Palestine in the last decade...the most comprehensive treatment of Palestinian suffering under Israeli control and offers the only possible way to end it...a 'must read' for anyone seeking to understand the current situation of the Palestinians and Israel." -- Professor Joseph Massad, Columbia University
[This book focuses] "on the many civil society and campus initiatives around the world that are bravely ushering in a new era of global grass-roots organizing for justice...The Battle for Justice in Palestine will inspire readers that Palestinian self-determination is not only possible but absolutely necessary." -- Moustafa Bayoumi, author of How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?? Being Young and Arab in America
ALI ABUNIMAH directs The Electronic Intifada and wrote One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli Palestinian Impasse. A leader in the movement for justice in Palestine for the past 20 years, in 2013 he received the Lannan Cultural Freedom Fellowship.
Come hear Ali and get your own copy of this exciting new book!
Tuesday, April 22 - 7pm
First Congregational Church of Berkeley
2345 Channing Way (at Dana)
(10 minute walk from downtown Berkeley Bart)
Tickets available soon! A benefit for the Middle East Children's Alliance,
510-548-0542, www.mecaforpeace.org, meca@mecaforpeace.org
Wheelchair accessible, ASL interpreted, cosponsored by KPFA.
Community Events
Stanford, CA: Children as Agents for Change:
A Discussion on Children's Rights Around the World
February 27, 2014
Panel event featuring MECA and other organizations on children's rights.
Assembly Room at Bechtel International Center
584 Capistrano Way,
Stanford, CA 94305
Between earth and earth’s atmosphere, the amount of water remains constant; there is never a drop more, never a drop less. This is a story of circular infinity, of a planet birthing itself. ~Linda Hogan, Chickasaw
Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts
Contact: Susan Greene; 415-271-0576, susan.r.greene@gmail.com
We live in and on the surface of multiple layers that are hidden from view; layers of history, stories, cultural movements and geography. Using the stories, poetics and politics of water, “Resurfacing” interrogates global environmental systems and the ways in which they are culturally and socially produced, supported, resisted and transformed. “Resurfacing” is envisioned as an inter-disciplinary interactive exhibit, project-space and conference. “Resurfacing” maps parallels and connections between seemingly distant locations and issues; and aims to create and support relationships and production that will develop beyond the length of the exhibit.
EVENTS --- Updates and more information here: http://www.missionculturalcenter.org/
Saturday, February 8 / 1:00 - 9:00pm / Theater and Gallery
Conference and Film Screening
Privatization, Labor Rights, Human Rights, The Environment And The Veolia Group
A unique one-day conference bringing together activists from all around the world involved in union organizing, Environmental protection and Palestine solidarity to confront the French multinational Veolia/ Transdev and build community resistance to privatization, union busting and corporate profiteering form human rights violation. Evening show and film screening.
Wednesday, February 12 / 6:00 – 9:00pm / Gallery
Round Table, Winning Divestment: Student Struggles for Peace
Dedicated to the memory of Nelson Mandela. A panel discussion will bring activists to address the power, controversy and effectiveness of divestment as a tool for economic activism in different movements: the movement against apartheid in South Africa, the struggle for Palestinian rights, the global movement to avert the climate crisis. Film clips and movement posters, followed by an open conversation.
Wednesday, February 19 / 6:30 - 9:30pm / Gallery
Closing Reception and Art Forces Report Back
Presentation on recent projects in Refugee Camps in Lebanon and MAIA Mural Brigade in Gaza; plus special guests.
Resurfacing is curated by Susan Greene. Additional details about the exhibition can be found at:
http://artforces.org/, http://www.missionculturalcenter.org/
Sponsors include: www.breakthesilencearts.org, www.maiamuralproject.og
www.mecaforpeace.org, www.estria.org
"Enduring Roots: Over a Century of Resistance to the Jewish National Fund (JNF)"
Produced by the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN)
Directed by Alex Safron
Friday February 21st, 2014 Mission Cultural Center, SF
2868 Mission Street, San Francisco (1 block from BART)
- 6pm Reception and final night to visit the RESURFACING exhibit
- 7pm Film screening followed by Q&A with Director and Activists
Facebook Event Link
Purchase Tickets Here
(Sliding Scale $5-$20)
"Enduring Roots: Over a Century of Resistance to the Jewish National Fund" is a 40-minute documentary chronicling stories of al-Nakba survivors, interviews with their descendants about the case of refugee return, and current and growing resistance to the ongoing colonization of Palestine by the Jewish National Fund.
Join us at 6pm for a reception in the upstairs gallery to visit the last night of the RESURFACING exhibit of Movement Art. Sliding scale tickets can be purchased at missionculturalcenter.org.
In the name of environmentalism, the Jewish National Fund (JNF) plants trees and builds parks on Palestinian land. Over the past 113 years, the strategies of the JNF to acquire land in historic Palestine have changed, but its goals remain the same. The Jewish National Fund's Blueprint Negev project is a $600 million plan to "develop" al-Naqab (Negev) for Jews only in the wake of the Prawer Plan. The Prawer Plan is a current plan of the Israeli government to forcibly remove up to 30,000 Bedouin citizens of Israel from their land in al-Naqab. The International Stop the JNF Campaign is working to revoke the JNF's charitable status worldwide and expose its role in the historic and ongoing colonization of Palestine.
Sponsored by: Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA), Art Forces, Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC), Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), Global Women's Strike and US Palestinian Community Network (USPCN)
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MECA is planning to send more shipments to Lebanon in the coming months. Please make a secure, online donation to help us send life-saving aid to Palestinian and Syrian refugees in Lebanon.
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