Without doubt the greatest part of working in the ‘culture industries’ in dubai over the past few years has been connecting with passionate people pushing things forward around the world. We were honored to host a very special, intimate spoken work performance by Suheir Hammad years ago (2004 i think) at five green in Dubai. Suheir had just spent time traveling around Palestine / Israel and traveled straight to us practically performing on arrival. Needless to say she was charged, the audience stunned.

I recently received an email from her updating me on her latest:

last year i spent 3 months in palestine, the longest amount of time i’d ever been allowed to stay there.  i had the honor of working on annemarie jacir’s film, salt of this sea.  the film is important to me for many reasons, and while i’m not an actress, the film’s story and the larger story it was engaging in are very dear to my heart.  we all did our best, and cannes noticed by officially selecting it for the un certain regard category.

the film’s site has a link to a facebook page which is updated with festival news, awards, press and photos. please fwd the links to your friends and groups of good folk.  there is info for festivals and distributors on the site as well.

other than a bit of press, i haven’t talked much about my experience because it was so much.  it will take me years and times to express the magic fully.  in the mean times, holla.

one
s

there’s more info online: http://www.philistinefilms.org/ and the trailer is at: http://www.philistinefilms.org/salt_trailer.html

For those who want more, I recommend Drops of This Story and Born Palestinian, Born Black. Both books touched me immensely when i read them many years ago (and indeed lead to us booking Suheir to perform in Dubai in the first place).